On Monday May 14th I’ll join Jake White, Mike Murphy and Kat TIngey for a WRITERS IN THE ROUND Benefit Concert, in support of MS Research. The concert will be held at the Wight House in Bountiful UT.
Concert Details: Jake White, Kat Tingey, Mike Murphy, Cori Connors. May 14th, 2012. Wight House Reception Center State Room. Doors open at 6:30pm. Concert begins at 7:00pm. Tickets: $10 Adults, $7 Children (under 12), $40 Family (up to 3 adult and 3 child). Tickets available at Murphy’s Guitars 801-298-4777 and at the door.

One of the beneifts of Benefits (concerts where the performance is donated and the cost of the ticket goes to a worthy cause…like helping kids in local hospitals) is getting to play with friends. Our payment is your applause (and the “warm fuzzy” of service)
Tonight I’ll be doing a writers in the round set with my buddies Dave and Carls Eskelsen. Other performers include Nelson Barrs and Troy Wood’s band, as well as Miss Farmington Jessica Francis. This concert benefits the CHILDRENS MIRACLE NETWORK.
Monday, April 9
7:00 pm
Farmington Arts Center
120 S Main St, Farmington UT
tickets $7 person/ $25 family
Bring the fam for Home Evening (or…Away Evening)

It’s the Holy Season, the season of Lent, the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter, when people of certain faiths sacrifice something in the name of the Lord.  Though I am not a Catholic and my religiion doesn’t officially observe Lent, I have chosen for the last few years to make a personal Lenten sacrifice.  Where I grew up, in Pennsylvania, my friends gave up things like chocolate, or soda pop, or kissing.  But I determined to make a sacrifice of commission rather than omission, so to speak.  So I make time every day during the Lenten season to do some purposeful writing.  Sometimes it takes me an hour…sometimes four.  And more often than not my husband goes to bed alone while I am up chipping away at the computer keyboard.  I publish my writing every day on my blog: www.coriconnors.blogspot.com.  You’re welcome to take a peek.  More often than not what I write is autobiographical.  You can read, for instance, about  my most recent guitar acquisition on #24. THE MASTER’S HANDS, or about Flat Stanley’s adventure in the studio in #3. STANLEY. I never what I will write about until the day I write.  This year I am basing my pieces on photographs.

My Lent writing for last year, 2011, included the stories behind my songs…one song per day.  Close to 50 stories about the writing of songs you may or may not know. Backstories to the songs.

So if you’re wondering who the real Cori Connors is, or where my songs came from, you’re most likely to find it there, in my Blog.

Come on over.

I’m delighted to be sharing a Writers in the Round set with my friends Peter Breinholt and Nancy Hanson this coming Saturday at Mountain View High School in Orem, UT.  Come share in the good energy…and at the same time help make a child’s wish come true.

“Five of Utah’s top entertainers: Peter Breinholt, Cori Connors, Jessie Clark Funk, Nancy Hanson and David Tolk, will perform on March 17 at Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah, in a concert to benefit the Utah Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Admission at the door is $7 per person or $30 per family. The concert, emceed by Fox13’s Big Budah, begins at 7 p.m. in the Mountain View High School auditorium, 665 W. Center Street in Orem.

The “An Evening of Wishes” concert is the service-learning senior project of six Utah Valley University digital media students. UVU’s Digital Media Department requires all graduating seniors to complete a project that benefits the community. Organizers are hoping to raise at least $5,000 for the charity.”

It’s late at night, after midnight, and I should be heading to bed.  But I felt a need to pause and post a quick THANK YOU to those who share my heart through my music.  It has been a gloriously fulfilling and heartwarming holiday performance season for me.  The Lord blessed me with relatively good health.  I did not try to cut any of my fingers off this year (as I did last year!).  My throat remained strong and healthy in spite of many around me lovingly sharing their germs.  And though I live with nerve damage from Guillain Barre Syndrome I have not suffered with distressing pain or weakness even when I overdo it.  Thanks be to the Maker of us all!  And thanks be to Him for planting a witness in my heart that He is worthy of praise through music…thatHe gave and continues to give all good things to His children…and that He is my redeemer.

I look forward to doing some writing the next few months, am excited to be working on the Clytie Adams show this summer, and am allowing little ponderous thoughts about a children’s album to creep into my head.

Thank you, if you are reading this, for your interest and support.  Grass roots music is the farmer’s market of the music world and I thank you for supporting my humble harvest.

Be well!

Cori

A few years back I wrote this little essay which was published in one of my favorite little magazines called GUIDEPOSTS.  I printed copies of it this past Monday when I shared my table with 10 beautiful young women whom I teach in church.  They come to my house every month for what we call Laurel Lunch during the school day. We try to have everything prepared for them so they can sweep in, gobble goodness, and head back to school without needing a written excuse for being late.  I absolutely love these girls and cherish their friendship and pray for them to be strong in a rapidly declining moral environment.  Among other things their plates had little mounds of peas.  And beside their plates, next to their knives,  was this little story about my mom and the grandfather I never knew but through his daughter’s eyes:

The Knife

One Sunday afternoon our family gathered around our big oak table for dinner. Soon my daughter Kate’s laughter rose above the talk. “Gram, you’re silly!” she said. We all turned to see my mom delicately lifting to her mouth a small strand of peas on the blade of her knife. All but one pea made it, and everyone clapped. Then Mom told us the story behind her unorthodox technique:

“When I was little we didn’t have much. It was the Depression. But we did have a table full of food because my father grew wonderful vegetables. Lots of hoboes who had jumped from the train wandered onto our property, looking for a meal. More often than not an extra seat was pulled up to our dinner table.

“One summer afternoon I was sweeping the kitchen floor when my father’s voice came through the screen door: ‘Lizzy, set another plate. We have company tonight.’ Our guest paused in the doorway, and dipped his head in a gesture of gratitude. ‘Looks like he doesn’t speak much English,’ Dad said, ‘but he’s hungry like we are. His name is Henry.’

“When dinner was ready Henry stood until we were all seated, then gently perched on the edge of his chair, his head bowed and his hat in his lap. The blessing was said and dishes were passed from hand to hand.

“We all waited, as was proper, for our guest to take the first bite. Henry must have been so hungry he didn’t notice us watching him as he grabbed his knife. Carefully he slid the blade into the pile of peas before him, and then lifted a quivering row to his mouth without spilling a single pea. He was eating with his knife! I looked at my sister May and we covered our mouths to muffle our snickers. Henry took another knifeful, and then another.

“My father, taking note of the glances we were exchanging, firmly set down his fork. He looked me in the eye, then took his knife and thrust it into the peas on his plate. Most of them fell off as he attempted to lift them to his mouth, but he continued until all the peas were gone.

“Dad never did use his fork that evening, because Henry didn’t. It was one of my father’s silent lessons in acceptance. He understood the need for this man to maintain his dignity, to feel comfortable in a strange place with people of different customs. Even at my young age I understood the greatness of my father’s simple act of brotherhood.”

Mom paused, looked at her grandchildren, and winked as she plowed her knife into a mountain of peas.

Contributed by Cori Connors, of Farmington, Utah, to Guideposts, March 1997, p. 36

We read the story, then I challenged the girls to remember to be gracious with all people, especially those they don’t understand.  Then noting the impending season of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I challenged them to find Christ in places where they might not normally look for Him.  And if He is not easily found, I asked them to invite Him in.  In the halls at school, in the dressing room at their dance recitals, in their locker rooms, and their cars.  They are beautiful loving daughters of God and I know that if they are conscious of it they will seek for all good things. How I love them!

And for sure, tomorrow…Thanksgiving day…you’ll find the Connors/Hansen family sliding their knives under the peas on their plates in honor of my mother’s father, George Washington Parrish, and the goodness he saw, shared, and bestowed on his posterity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Musical Fare from the Connors Camp

Coming up…Brigham City Music in the City Holiday Concert & Cori Connors Holiday Concerts in Farmington (details follow this post)

Seriously.  From the time I was very small it was not so much the thrill of the day that made it exciting…whether it was Christmas or Thanksgiving or my birthday or even a vacation…it was the anticipation.  Thanks to my environment and my Maker, I have always had a dandy imagination, and I sure used it over and over again when something wonderful was in the offing!

Half the fun of a concert is the “before” stuff: deciding the tone of your event; choosing musicians; creating a set list; designing advertising; and…my favorite part…rehearsing!  It’s one thing to sit in the comfort of your easy chair all alone and run through songs, and it’s another thing to sit in that very same space and have the air around you filled with harmonies and instrumentation and the spirit of those who make music with you.  Heaven!

Last week we had our first rehearsal for the Christmas and Brigham concerts.  We usually start with a bowl of soup or something because the Eskelsens have come straight from feeding their horses.  Then Dave E.  will pick up his lovely Stika guitar and start playing some wonderful James Taylor tune.  It’s like a musical warm-up, the pace turning from easy conversation to the rhythmic flow found only in music and fishing streams.  Mark Robinette will pick up his bass and warm up his fingers.  Carla will plant herself and her dulcimer and harp in the corner of the couch, a blanket tucked around her chilled legs and her little Bug dog curled around her feet.  I’ll tune up my Collings and Taylor guitars and soon we are all in the same river, floating along on the music.  There really is nothing else like it, at least that I know of, it is so divine.  I did tell Dave once (my husband, Dave) that the moment you deliver a baby, that moment when you touch  the underside of heaven when that little spirit takes the first breath, THAT is a similar feeling to creating music that feels complete.

My musician friends make my music feel complete.  In the studio, with my good friends and engineers Mark Stephenson and Mike Green; and on the stage with my other good friends; they take these little songs and dress them up so nicely.  I understand the great and rare blessing in this and I am grateful.

So while the ultimate is to have a receptive audience who “gets” what we are trying to say in our music; the next best is the anticipation, the rush of emotion that rises in the middle of rehearsal when all the parts come together and we are one in the song.

So it begins: the heavy rehearsal rotation, the joy and the anticipation of our holiday performances. We can hardly wait to share it with you, whether it is one of our concerts or smaller private events – corporate dinners; ward parties; family gatherings.  We love making music, and we love sharing it with you.  It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Brigham City MUSIC IN THE CITY Holiday Concert

Friday, November 18, 2011 – 7:30 pm

Brigham City Arts Center – Brigham City Utah

Tickets $8 (Students are $5 with id)

Dave and Carla Eskelsen open (they are amazing!)

Click HERE for details.

CORI CONNORS HOLIDAY CONCERT

Songs & Stories

3 Shows:

Saturday Dec 3rd  3 pm matinee performance

Saturday Dec 3rd 8 pm evening performance

Monday Dec 5 7:30 pm evening performance

Farmington Arts Center – 120 S Main St. Farmington Utah

Tickets $10 available online HERE or order by phone at 801-451-0953 during normal business hours.

(The sasiest way to get tickets is by calling, by the way. These concerts have sold out the last three years, so it is recommended that you purchase your tickets early. It’s an intimate venue…only seats 300.  I love singing in my home town, and I love having home town type people around me!)

Hope to see you there!

Hi Folks!  Considering that I live much of my life in the right side of my brain, this left brained website challenge is throwing me for a loop!  Please forgive me as I learn.  I’m figuring out how to upload music, and have some of it for sale as downloads already. But I don’t yet have CD’s and sheet music up for sale, though you can certainly buy them!  Just email me and we can get you whatever you want.  Sheet music is $5 a piece, and CD’s are $15.  $3 shipping regardless of how many you order.  Hopefully this will all be moot in a week, but if you’re anxious to get your choir singing Joseph and Mary, or your kids singing Heavenly Choirs, you can contact me personally and we can expedite.: cori@coriconnors.com.

Now back to the  reason I even have a website…the stuff I REALLY like to do! We are starting rehearsals for the Christmas Concerts (Dec 3 & 5) , which is always super fun!  And we’re  prepping for the Brigham City concert on Nov 18th.  I’m also excited to be performing for numerous private Holiday parties throughout Utah. Hope to see you at any of these.

Thanks for your patience as I try to navigate this very sharp “learning” curve!

Hugs,

Cori

Sorry for the mess…

We’re building a new place for us to be here on the web … one where we can sit down together, share a few songs and learn more about each other.

We’ll have music for you to download, our schedule of appearances and a place where you and I can just sit down and chat from time to time.

But, as with all remodeling projects … we have to put up with a frustrating period of dust before everything comes together. Please be patient with us, sign up with us for our updates … and we’ll let you know as soon as the we’re ready for the open house.

This are moving pretty fast … so come back soon!