How can I keep from singing?

 

What is it about choral music? It lifts your mood, gives you new friends and probably makes you live longer.

 

I’m not sure why. Choirs are really dictatorships—even if benevolent. A stern figure in front waves his or her arms up and down, issues commands and you are supposed to shut up!

 

I didn’t really discover choral music until I was in my mid-60s and joined the Dumbarton United Methodist Church choir and a gospel choir, Mosaic Harmony.  I was inspired by my daughter’s wonderful high school chorus. Over 12 years, I took part in a bunch of classy Washington, D.C., choruses, first the NoVA Lights Chorale but most notably City Choir and the Washington Men’s Camerata.

 

A big moment came at the Kennedy Center, when a Camerata tenor spontaneously proposed on stage to his girl friend in the audience. She came forward, said yes, and we sang at their wedding in New Jersey.

 

Or the time, with Berkshire Choir International in Austria,  when the director of the famous Vienna Boys’ Choir stepped in during an emergency. The scheduled director fell off the stage in rehearsal and broke her arm as we watched in horror.

 

Then there was the audition at the Capitol Hill Chorale, which went quite badly until I pointed out that the director had given me the wrong song!

 

Or the leaky roof at a Choralis concert, when six inches of water covered the floor during a storm.

 

And the colorful directors. One told us, “This is serious music. If you are just here to have fun, go to a campfire!”

 

I am proud of my high-pitched pipes, but I confess that my sight reading isn’t that good.  I frequently sneaked through because scarce tenors rarely fail auditions. I leaned on other tenors for help. Thank you, Sarah, Ben, Tim, Jim and Mickey.

 

I thought one of my biggest losses in moving to South Boston, VA, would be leaving those high-falutin’ choruses. But then I found the First Baptist Church choir, the same church that recently took in all of those nursing home patients after a fire.  In summers, I had sung at the church’s Community Chorus. We don’t even attend that church regularly, but I sing with them now when I can.

 

“We’re glad you are here,” Dwight and Coleman keep telling me. I love Billy’s jokes. Mickey and Floyd are quite cordial. Karen, Jean, Pam and others are so friendly. In a choir of 15 or 20 people, you feel like you are making a difference. The director, Susan Davis, gives us a lot of encouragement. She’ll say: “Let’s go over that section again” when she could have said “You really blew it!”

 

I often hid my church-going in D.C., especially among journalists, who consider it way un-cool. But in South Boston, the whole community is built around churches.

 

So have I really lost something by singing in a small town? Just before Christmas, we are going to perform in a big city, Raleigh, with the famous Pepper Choprlin’s chorale. And next Memorial Day, we are talking about going with him to Carnegie Hall! I have arrived!