Archive for October, 2007
Back to regular life
Wow. Four days and change spent in New York, and my first time in the city at that. I have no idea where to start yet. I’ve spent most of today just readjusting to “regular life”, but honestly that has more to do with how I react to being outside my routine than with New York.
I think my first shot is going to be to say that I ended up feeling not nearly as overwhelmed as I thought I would. It’s without a doubt a challenging city. It’s tuned for the idea of people knowing exactly what they’re doing and exactly what they want… optimized for speed and efficiency of human interaction. For a first-time tourist, though, I really did pretty well, and I want to go back.
More later, but I figure that’s a pretty good starting point and a pretty telling statement.
What solo?!?
Quick note: this post is really part 2 of a multi-part post about my experience in the Huntsville Master Chorale. If you haven’t read the first post, go do it now. 
So, I left off at just about the point that I was beginning to believe that I could handle this new music by the time the concert came around.
At this point, I feel like I should stop and say how much fun it is to sing for our director, Tom. A very good friend of mine got in the habit of posting funny things that her choir director said during rehearsals. I remember reading those and being downright jealous not only that she had her own “musical outlet” but also that her director found such joy in the process. After my very first practice, I knew it was going to be that way with Tom. He’s funny, he’s incredibly patient with us, and it seems obvious to me that he loves doing it.
Side note: I actually started notating “Tom-isms” in my music for later posting, but unfortunately I didn’t get around to posting until now… after we turned in our music. Maybe I’ll do better over the coming practice cycle.
Anyway, that bit about Tom actually leads into the next part of my story. We were finishing up practice one night, and Tom said that he wanted the various soloists that he had assigned for the Gospel Mass to hang around for a few minutes (as he had asked in an email sent out previously). I was busy shoving my music in my folder and getting ready to walk out, when Tom looked straight at me and said, “Let’s go over yours right quick.”
I swear that right then and there I had one of those “Who’s he looking at behind me?” moments, with the dumb look on my face and everything. I think I even turned around to see who he was talking to. I may have managed to say, “What?” Tom said, “Yeah. Didn’t you get the email I sent out?” My response: “Yeah. I remember seeing an email about solos, but I didn’t occur to me that I actually needed to read it.” Tom (looking at Sharon, our piano accompanist): “Listen to this guy!”
Sure enough, at the bottom of the email I had ignored, Tom had asked if I would look at one of the 7 or 8 measure “mini solos” he had carved out of the Sanctus. He said that he thought the range fit my voice well and that I might enjoy working out how to embellish it. “Dumbfounded” is not a word I often use to describe myself, but there I was. I read it cold once or twice that night, apologized for not paying attention to the email, and told him I would work on it for the next practice.
I poked at it over the next week, and I figured out where it felt like it wanted to go. I can’t really tell you from where I drew the inspiration. Honestly, it felt pretty over-the-top to me, but it also felt right. Tom really didn’t give any of the soloists any constraints or specific style instructions. I think he really wanted to find out what each of us would do to personalize it.
I unleashed my interpretation on the Chorale at the next practice. I had no clue what everyone was going to think of it, and I was still wondering why it was me and not someone else doing it. Don’t get me wrong… I do pretty well, but I’m nowhere close to the best in this group. The initial reaction, I think, was surprise. That could have been either good or bad. I’ll skip the dramatics (and also the specifics) and say that from that point all the way through the concert performance on Sunday, I got more compliments and encouragement than I ever expected. Given that even I don’t know exactly from whence it came, it was interesting to hear folks ask me specifics about my musical background in response to the solo. I think Sharon was probably on the right track when she said she could hear elements of contemporary Christian music.
I think I’m going to end up with 3 posts out of this. I still want to talk a bit about the literature we performed, but that feels like it needs to be another installment.
In the deep end
I said in my previous post on the subject that I would keep everyone posted as the Huntsville Master Chorale’s season progressed. I think I’ve been holding my breath a bit on posting the next installment for much the same reason as the first: I just wasn’t sure how well I was going to do.
In that first post, I said that I had jumped into the deep end, and I wasn’t kidding. It took me approximately half a practice to realize just how much talent I was in the midst of. The Chorale is chock full of music teachers and ministers of music. One of them is our excellent piano accompanist. Another directed our men-only piece for this concert. One gentleman served as our authority on Hebrew pronunciation, because it’s only one of several languages he has studied. Another member (if I remember correctly) actually did graduate level research on black gospel music, so Tom tagged out with him on the appropriate piece. Then there are the voices. I think Tom had fun this time finding as many solos as he could, because he has so many excellent voices to choose from.
I haven’t even started talking about the literature yet. About half of our program for this concert was Jewish in origin. Several of the pieces were liturgical. Those and more required us to learn to pronounce Hebrew. It was transliterated, thank goodness, but still an additional challenge. As for the music itself, it was definitely the most difficult I’ve ever had to sing. So, it wasn’t much of a comfort to me to hear that the music had been specifically chosen to be not very difficult (since we only had 9 rehearsals before the concert). I distinctly remember leaving the second practice feeling like I was barely keeping my head above water. I was certain that everyone around me could tell just how much I was struggling (and I’m still not sure I was wrong about that feeling).
I kept plugging, though, and the long-disused “musical muscles” started flexing again. It had been so long that I had forgotten just how automatic (and how subconscious) music memory is for me. Little by little I started being able to feel my way through the pieces. It gradually got less and less about remembering how to get from one note to the next and more and more about learning and remembering the nuance and style required for every piece. By the last couple of practices, I was really beginning to have fun with it.
In the interest of making sure that I get something posted tonight, I’m going to stop there and continue in the next post.