Last night it was business as usual at the WFM Listening Room.  Both La Tanya Hall and Julia Wade and their Inspirational music ended our week on the perfect notes – notes that soared, notes that calmed and notes that enlivened the soul.

These Fridays are crazy busy for me.  I wake up in the morning on show day and immediately know I’m in for it.  It’s a day of go, go, go until I flop down in my chair at the end of the day.  I won’t bore you with the details, but rather assure you that that’s just what it is – a day of endless detail.  It never stops.

When I get home at night, it’s all I can do to just crawl off to bed.

I’ve been doing this all my life, but it doesn’t get any easier.  Thank God for a great staff and a most professional venue.

And then there’s the talent.  Each night we do this, I always have the same reaction.  The set-up of the room is done, the sound check’s done, the audience is in their seats, the show’s about to begin.  I’m still rushing around finishing the last minute details, I get up on stage and kick off the night, bring on the first act and then check the lights, the sound, make sure the latecomers are in and get them into the remaining seats.

Then I sit down myself and become an audience member.  Then I get to listen to the music.  Ah, the music.  This is why I do all this.  It all comes back to me…

And suddenly there’s La Tanya Hall, with Jay Bianchi on piano, a pianist I’ve admired for years tickling the ivories – and she’s singing Joni Mitchell’s A Case Of You, and the room swims with golden and blue lights and the music is fine and played beautifully with Pete McCann on guitar weaving his magic through the song.

And I watch La Tanya, a vocalist that I’ve admired for years as a total pro with a truly gifted voice, one of those voices that comes forth with great assurance, in perfect tune, and the years of experience that those 10,000 hours have given her – and she’s connected to the insides of the lyric and weaving her spell over a rapt audience.

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet

And Jay and Pete are two great NYC musicians bringing fresh chord changes to an old classic, and La Tanya’s beauty fills the room and oh Lord, but I love this song.  And it’s then all worth it.  The hassle, the details, the worry, the stress, the cancellations, the sweat…  Because the music is better than I had imagined.  I get to live in New York City and present in this gorgeous room on Park Avenue provided by Third Church of Christ, Scientist where the talent around me is just enormous – where the best in the world come to try their wares.

And I’m fortunate enough to be able to work with them and give them an elegant place to perform here on Park Avenue with a dedicated and fascinated audience of music lovers and a gorgeous sound system.

It’s then I get to sit back and deeply enjoy the product of my imagination.  The audience stands and cheers La Tanya Hall – and it’s all the way it should be.

Then in the second act Julia Wade has a moment, a song, that breaks through time and space.  She sings, from her first album, the title song, Upon The Mountain, and it’s pure magic.  New acts are tough and she’s singing a new act, but when she begins this old standard (for her), a song she’s sung hundreds of times, the newness of the act disappears as she settles in.

She takes us on a spiritual journey speaking to us first with the timeless words of Buddha underscored with the music of the Orient.  She begins to sing and she’s there – up on the mountain of her meditation – she invites us, no, she carries us up that mountain to the quietude of her meditation.  We travel with her, spellbound, riding on the conviction of her voice, the commitment of her words…

How do you get there?

How can you possibly break through?

You start by going to the secret place

The innermost point of control

The deepest recesses of your inner space

The still point of your soul

Where matter doesn’t matter

And mind is all in all

And truth pours forth like a fountain

Where darkness is not known

And light is all there is

And it’s simply you and God

Upon the mountain

As the song finishes, there is no applause.  People just sit, lost in the moment of their own spiritual discovery.  It is church at its best; it is the secret place.  The room is silent for a full 10 seconds and the people pull their thoughts back to the earth and the quietude of the room.  Finally the applause bursts forth.

I sit and once more sense le raison d’être, the reason for my existence.  It is to bring these moments to some reality.  It is to illuminate the room, to inspire a world in great need of inspiration.  I have some terrific help.  The talent up on that stage.

New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town…

The talent is here – walking the streets.  It’s all around us.  Trying to make it happen, trying to get the chance, the chance to inspire an audience.

Well, last night it happened.

It’ll happen again.

And again…

Join us.

Julia’s photographs by John Johnson