Choral Arts

I have two sides to my musical life. There's the leisurely side that listens to interesting music on my iPod for fun, and then there's the academic side of me that sings music I would probably never listen to in a million years. I enjoy the challenge of singing difficult music with good tone, dynamics, phrasing, etc. Ensemble singing, truly excellent ensemble singing, is definitely a love of mine. Since college, I really haven't had opportunity to do much of that. I've sung with ensembles here and there, but nothing consistent.

Last year I participated in the Choral Arts Society at the local state university (if you know where I live, then you know where) for the first time. It's a hybrid community choir/student choir mostly made up of graduate students, undergrad students, and community members who have extensive music experience. We practice for 3 hours a week, all on one night of the week, this year it's on Tuesday nights. It's a long night, but it's fun. We do abundant sight-reading, just because we have so much music to learn. The music we're working on for our first concert of the year is all 20th century stuff with lots of dissonance, changing time signatures, accidentals all over the place, and it's very challenging. It's not as bad as last year, where 3 weeks into the school year we had our first concert, and it was the Rachmaninoff Vespers in Russian! They had performed it the year before, and were just brushing up on it, whereas those of us who hadn't been in the choir before were completely lost. This choir is "high brow" all the way. Sometimes I wonder if my brows go high enough...

Anyway, last night was our second practice of the year. I'm glad to be doing this choir again. It's good for me to have a place where I interact with adults. And it's also good for me to have a place in my life where I'm not surrounded by my church friends. There aren't really many opportunities for me to make relationships with people who aren't already Christians at this point in my life. Besides this, everything I do (with scheduled repetition) is either with my family or my church. I do grocery shop regularly, and I see many of the same check-out people, but I wouldn't say there's really much of an opportunity for relationship there. In order to really touch people for Jesus, relationships make a difference, and now I have choir friends who either don't know Jesus at all, or don't have a life-changing relationship with Him, and I can possibly influence them for the kingdom of God. It's a good thing.

Since joining this choir, there is a part of me that was dormant for 8 years that has come back to vitality. It feels good to be stretching my vocal muscles and brain this way. It's why I studied music in college in the first place. There's just something about rehearsal that feeds me. And then to take what has been rehearsed to an audience and do it for real is such a thrill. There's always those things that you know could go horribly wrong, and you hope they don't. The need to be focused at all times, to pay attention to the details, to give it all you've got right then is an experience that is pretty hard to match. Sure it's work, but then that payoff makes it all worth it. In an ensemble, it's a shared experience, and that strengthens the relationships forged during chit-chat breaks before and after rehearsal.

It's also great fodder for some wonderfully cerebral songs to get stuck in my head. But not yet. I don't know the music well enough yet for it to get stuck. I'm sure it will happen closer to concert time!

On my way home last night at ten o'clock, after rehearsal, my Jonathan Coulton CD was playing in the car and it was in the middle of "Millionaire Girlfriend." After a rehearsal like that, I can actually sing the melody up an octave, which may not really sound all that great, but it's fun to do every now and then, when I'm alone in my car. I usually harmonize when I sing along to his stuff, or sing melody in the register he's singing. All that's to say "Millionaire Girlfriend" is in my head this morning.