Smith: The angels sang, too, at St. Rose

Bill and Mary Traverso were robbed of their hearts Saturday evening at the Green Music Center. They went to church Sunday, and it happened again.

Saturday, the Traversos were part of the Santa Rosa Symphony audience that fell in love with the 40 angelic voices of the Augsburg Cathedral Boys Choir. Tears flowed as the globe-trotting boys sang a capella and moved across the stage and throughout Weill Hall like a marching team, then soared to orchestral accompaniment in Mozart’s Mass in C Major.

Sunday morning, Bill and Mary arrived at central Santa Rosa’s historic St. Rose Church and there were the 40 boys from Augsburg. The choir stayed at a downtown hotel for its three GMC performances, and director Reinhard Kammler went looking for a mass within walking distance.

“It was such an amazing honor for us,” said a star-struck Ginger Schoenstein, manager of the St. Rose rectory office. As mass began, she said, the boys “were lined up in the first six rows, the youngest in the front and the older in the back.”

They sang two songs after communion. Mary Traverso notes that especially in that setting, they sounded heavenly.

On Monday, the boys of the Augsburg choir toured as much as they could and still got back to the GMC for their final performance that evening. The symphony posted on its Facebook page a pretty sweet video of them singing in the rain at Armstrong Woods.

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IF KIDS ARE IN THE CAR when you’re next near Morris Street on the eastern edge of Sebastopol, consider making a brief stop.

Little ones will love the new archway to the peace garden that Jim “Mr. Music” Corbett and friends created behind the Community Cultural Center. Parents may be touched by it.

The steel archway was made by Sebastopol’s famed junk artist, Patrick Amiot, and it features, up overhead, a winged character on a swing.

The “Peace Town” honors the memory of Megan Libby, who was 16 when she was killed in a traffic crash on Highway 12, and all of the Sonoma County youth who have died far too soon.

Funding for the gateway came from the annual “For Our Angels” scholarship golf tournaments hosted each year by Brian and Nancy Libby and parents who have lost children.

A plaque on the new garden sculpture notes that it is dedicated to Megan and “to all the young people of West county.

“Come home safe.”

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OF THESE 3 NAMES, which stands ever so slightly apart from the other two?

Martha Stewart. William Shatner. Steve Jaxon.

Yes, that would be Jaxon, host of the KSRO radio talk show, The Drive. In the company of the Empress of Style and the Star Trek star, Jaxon is still a bit pre-famous.

But he has something very much in common with the two of them. All will be honored Jan. 15 at a red-carpet Taste Awards gala in Hollywood.

The Academy of Media Tastemakers chose Jaxon’s “Wine Wednesday,” a weekly hour of Sonoma/Napa wine talk co-hosted by Ben Pearson of the sponsoring Bottle Barn, as the best Critic or Review Series.

Jaxon will learn at the gala if he won an even bigger award - Best Food or Drink Radio Broadcast - and he’ll no doubt hang with Martha and Captain Kirk.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.