At the end, the evening's soloists and Mr. Tritle appeared at the edge of the choir loft to wave to audience members, who stood and turned around to cheer them.
He even seemed to be enjoying himself, treating child choirs to little waves of his hand after their brief tributes.
Then as the golf cart passes, the hammer choir people rejoin like a wave pulsing the golf cart forward. .
"You're Crashing, But You're No Wave" features a gospel choir, while "Thriller" contains a spoken-word intro from Jay-Z.
"Don't you have a lot of praise for the Lord, like the choir does today?" he yelled, and a wave of amens and shouts of joy answered back.
Many fanned themselves or waved their hands as the choir sang "At the Cross" and Mr. Harding preached that despair can be cured by "accepting God's promise".
Pizzicato strings and electro synthesizers, house beats and new wave rock, electric pianos and phantom choirs, carnival rhythms and reverbed spaghetti-Western guitar all cruised by with smiley efficiency: a suave, unchallenging pleasure.
Now they were riding that wave to a new high, with the choir singing not just for the faith but for the nation itself.
A second, bigger wave is coming in April: the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, under the masterly Bach specialist Ton Koopman, will present a reconstruction of the lost St. Mark Passion, and Christian Tetzlaff will perform the complete works for solo violin.
But I was forced to conduct because I was an organ scholar at university: organists are expected to venture from the relative safety of the loft and wave their hands about in the front of the choir.
