It is Wednesday, and that means that I have choir practice tonight. But choir here is unlike any choir that I have ever been involved with, and I have sung with a lot of choirs. For those of you who do not know me well, I have been singing since I was a child - all the time.
It really started the summer after seventh grade when I was sent to the University of Illinois Summer Youth Music program. I did that program for several years, and sang with many other choirs as well. I sang with my family's church choir in the early 1970s. That choir was blessed with one of the professors of vocal music from MSU as it's director, and he gave us Gospel to sing on occasion. My high school choir was pathetic, so I went to the community college and sang with their 'honors' choir - the TOTS. (Tommy O Thompson Singers)
In the mid 1970s I sang in a wide variety of musical groups: rock bands, horn bands, jazz bands, I did country, funk and everything in between! I sang on artist's demo tapes, did background on albums, and sang a variety of jingles. All very interesting and fun, however not particularly lucrative or stable. Later, I sang to my children, like most mothers do. I tried to make sure that they learned to appreciate all kinds of music and encouraged them to sing as well.
Then when my youngest, Nick, was in the 5th grade, he told me to get a life so I went back to college. On a whim I signed up for the choir and rediscovered my love for choral music. Before I knew it I was also singing with their "Chamber Singers", and loving every minute of it. When I finished school, I did a short stint (one season) with the Flint Festival Chorus (the choir that sings with the Flint Symphony). At one point during all this - while Nick was in 7th grade, he was singing with five choirs and I was singing with two - and our rehearsal schedule was brutal. But we did have the opportunity to perform together on several occasions, and those concerts will be with me for ever. (I get kind of teary just remembering them.)
When I was teaching in Istanbul last year I had the opportunity to sing with the Istanbul European Choir - which was a marvelous multi-cultural experience. Singing an Italian Requim in Latin.... in a French Cathedral... to a largely Turkish-speaking, Muslim audience in Istanbul is something I will never forget! Music is the universal language - despite what the mathematicians tell you!
So now that I am hanging out here in Tucson, my brother has strong-armed me into singing with the choir at Southside Presbyterian Church and it is a unique experience on several levels. First of all there are more men than women in this choir - I have never experienced that before! Second, there is no written music involved here - none. The director, Dorothy, is a sixty-something African-American woman, who teaches us the gospel songs we sing each week through rote memorization. Third, I have to sing in Spanish every week - and I no hablo Espanol! Yikes! While I have sung with multi-cultural groups most of my life, and in all kinds of different languages, this choir and this church have a different kind of multi-culturism and I am being challenged in new ways. I like that. There is a surrealism to singing gospel music with a bunch of stiff white Presbyterians (and a few Hispanics) every Sunday. And I can't help but wonder... what will be next?
