Singing

[orthent]

Right before seminar started, the girl sitting next to me saw "Secrets of the Old" on my lap. "That's one of my favorite things ever!" she said, and I immediately imagined myself making a cat's breakfast of it--a song I also love, the first I've ever been assigned that really spoke to me. This classmate was the first to sing--she did "Will

Comments

[orthent]

Apparently, it went amazingly--just as you predicted, the combined choirs pulled a fantastic performance together at the last minute. Unfortunately for me, I was not a part of it--I woke up the night before with the 24-hour stomach flu, so I had to call in sick, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one; there's a lot of norovirus going around here, and nobody is going to stay home at finals time any longer than they can help, so there's very little to check the spread.

Still, I'll be singing with this group in the spring, and there will be other concerts. The year before last, the big spring concert was Handel's Messiah; last year, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana; it hasn't been decided what this year's is going to be, but both the directors like to push the envelope with new and challenging music. I shake my head now when I think of how little I liked this director at the beginning of the year, and how much respect I have for her now. At the beginning of the year, I felt that her demands on us made singing a stressful chore; now I feel that they show her respect for us as an ensemble, for what we're capable of. So I'm looking forward to spring.