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pinksoniaI just finished watching All the Small Things. Anyone else see it? A lot of the reviews call it too cutesy and hopelessly middle class, but I have to say that I enjoyed it. My enjoyment has a lot to do with the fact that I am a huge choir geek and want desperately to join Ester's choir.
I've always loved to sing and have been involved in choirs most of my life. I started in the youth choir at First Presbyterian of West Chester at the beginning of Kindergarten and stayed right through my graduation from high school. I stayed through the upset of 1992 when they hired a professional music director and made the member of the congregation who was acting as director step down. Not that the whole hub-bub made that much sense to my little fifth-grade self and my mother was never a member of the choir so there was no loyalty boycotting going on in my family as there was in so many others. I then joined the chancel choir after returning from college. Church choir (particularly during my high school years) was the place I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond. The majority of people in the youth choir were there because their parents made them, so if you actually cared and, you know, sang with your mouth open, there was no end to the opportunities you could get. I sang solos in regular services and in Christmas pageants, I got a scholarship to the Westminster Choir College Summer Vocal Institute for Highschool Musicians (also known as choir camp), and my trusty copy of the Presbyterian Hymnal still travels from place to place with me.
I started school choirs as quickly as I was able. Forth grade being the magic time at Exton Elementary. I did the Fifth grade Honors Chorus the next year - the sole requirement being having a two and a half octave range. If there was ever a time I would have quit choir Middle School was it. In my Middle School there were multiple sections of the choir who met under three different directors and all came together to preform at the twice yearly concerts. I had Mr. Wylie. Mr. Wylie was a strange bird. He had a plastic mannequin leg that he kept in the window and once a class period or so he'd say "Leg needs sun" and adjust it slightly. He talked a lot and showed favoritism, not toward certain students, but toward certain pieces of music. Each week we would sing the selections in his order of preference, getting through various numbers of them depending on how much talking he did in between. At the end of the year, when our section joined together with the other sections to practice for the final concert, I found out there was a whole piece of music I'd never heard before. Mr. Wylie just never gave it to us. Luckily I got placed in the other sections for the next two years or those kind of antics would have forced me to quit.
In high school I gave up lunch for four years to be in choir. I also got the chance to do what I'd been waiting years for: the musical. Unfortunately, I also developed audition anxiety, which in presents in me as mixing up the verses to what ever song I'm singing. I somehow became at least partially the poster child for the underdog. I had a little rooting section amongst the second row of chairs who wanted someone new to get a solo and thought I was their best hope. They were misguided. Instead the first row of chairs (our seating was completely self-selected, except that you had to be withing your voice part) consistently got chosen. Somehow I became focused on seating arrangements choosing that as the way I was going to reinvent myself for college. I was going to become the favorite, the person who sits in the front row and flirts with the director.
Not that that idea panned out at all. I'm hopeless at flirting, was too paralyzed by audition anxiety to even join the choir until my second semester, and had the luck of being the same year and voice part as probably the most talented person in the choir. I did sit the front row though. I learned to sight-sing (sort of), sang beautiful music (if in somewhat strange themed concerts - lyrics with one word or less, anybody?), and generally enjoyed myself. I would have said that the director had no idea who I was, but have found our since that showing up consistently and paying attention while there makes a greater impression than I ever thought.
Now all those choir experience made me recognize Micheal's choir (in All the Small things - remember how this slightly lengthy essay started). But I do have one experience, possibly my favorite, which is much more like Ester's choir. While I way doing my JYA, I attended the Glouster Place Baptist Church in Brighton (mostly because I had trouble finding a Presbyterian church and I refuse to be part of the charismatic movement that most of the CU tends toward). I joined the music group there sometime in the late fall early winter. There were six main members (including myself) and a couple more who came and went depending on the week. Pam and I sang, Pam was largely deaf and didn't do so well on any song she learned after she started to lose her hearing. There was the organist who couldn't read music. A brother and sister pair who played very well. She played the piano and he played the guitar or violin depending on the year in which a given song was published. The church custodian rounded out the group on trumpet - often drowning the rest of us out. About once a month we added a Bassoonist - because clearly every one needs a bassoonist, and I think twice during my nine months there they managed to rope some teen-aged boy into playing drums. As can be imagined, the music was often out of key or out of tempo. Often the various instruments were each playing in their own tempo. Blending was unheard of. Much of the music was terribly simplistic -- and some of it was simply terrible. But I don't think I've ever enjoyed a music group more. Every single person wanted to be there and loved what they were doing no matter how poorly they were doing it.
I've also been meaning to ask an etiquette question brought on my a Bones episode that aired about a month ago. I'm wondering why everyone wanted Brennan to keep her knowledge about Daisy from Sweets. I would want to know if someone I was seeing was cheating on me and I tend to think you should tell a friend if you suspect their partner of cheating. Is there something I'm missing?
I've always loved to sing and have been involved in choirs most of my life. I started in the youth choir at First Presbyterian of West Chester at the beginning of Kindergarten and stayed right through my graduation from high school. I stayed through the upset of 1992 when they hired a professional music director and made the member of the congregation who was acting as director step down. Not that the whole hub-bub made that much sense to my little fifth-grade self and my mother was never a member of the choir so there was no loyalty boycotting going on in my family as there was in so many others. I then joined the chancel choir after returning from college. Church choir (particularly during my high school years) was the place I was the proverbial big fish in a small pond. The majority of people in the youth choir were there because their parents made them, so if you actually cared and, you know, sang with your mouth open, there was no end to the opportunities you could get. I sang solos in regular services and in Christmas pageants, I got a scholarship to the Westminster Choir College Summer Vocal Institute for Highschool Musicians (also known as choir camp), and my trusty copy of the Presbyterian Hymnal still travels from place to place with me.
I started school choirs as quickly as I was able. Forth grade being the magic time at Exton Elementary. I did the Fifth grade Honors Chorus the next year - the sole requirement being having a two and a half octave range. If there was ever a time I would have quit choir Middle School was it. In my Middle School there were multiple sections of the choir who met under three different directors and all came together to preform at the twice yearly concerts. I had Mr. Wylie. Mr. Wylie was a strange bird. He had a plastic mannequin leg that he kept in the window and once a class period or so he'd say "Leg needs sun" and adjust it slightly. He talked a lot and showed favoritism, not toward certain students, but toward certain pieces of music. Each week we would sing the selections in his order of preference, getting through various numbers of them depending on how much talking he did in between. At the end of the year, when our section joined together with the other sections to practice for the final concert, I found out there was a whole piece of music I'd never heard before. Mr. Wylie just never gave it to us. Luckily I got placed in the other sections for the next two years or those kind of antics would have forced me to quit.
In high school I gave up lunch for four years to be in choir. I also got the chance to do what I'd been waiting years for: the musical. Unfortunately, I also developed audition anxiety, which in presents in me as mixing up the verses to what ever song I'm singing. I somehow became at least partially the poster child for the underdog. I had a little rooting section amongst the second row of chairs who wanted someone new to get a solo and thought I was their best hope. They were misguided. Instead the first row of chairs (our seating was completely self-selected, except that you had to be withing your voice part) consistently got chosen. Somehow I became focused on seating arrangements choosing that as the way I was going to reinvent myself for college. I was going to become the favorite, the person who sits in the front row and flirts with the director.
Not that that idea panned out at all. I'm hopeless at flirting, was too paralyzed by audition anxiety to even join the choir until my second semester, and had the luck of being the same year and voice part as probably the most talented person in the choir. I did sit the front row though. I learned to sight-sing (sort of), sang beautiful music (if in somewhat strange themed concerts - lyrics with one word or less, anybody?), and generally enjoyed myself. I would have said that the director had no idea who I was, but have found our since that showing up consistently and paying attention while there makes a greater impression than I ever thought.
Now all those choir experience made me recognize Micheal's choir (in All the Small things - remember how this slightly lengthy essay started). But I do have one experience, possibly my favorite, which is much more like Ester's choir. While I way doing my JYA, I attended the Glouster Place Baptist Church in Brighton (mostly because I had trouble finding a Presbyterian church and I refuse to be part of the charismatic movement that most of the CU tends toward). I joined the music group there sometime in the late fall early winter. There were six main members (including myself) and a couple more who came and went depending on the week. Pam and I sang, Pam was largely deaf and didn't do so well on any song she learned after she started to lose her hearing. There was the organist who couldn't read music. A brother and sister pair who played very well. She played the piano and he played the guitar or violin depending on the year in which a given song was published. The church custodian rounded out the group on trumpet - often drowning the rest of us out. About once a month we added a Bassoonist - because clearly every one needs a bassoonist, and I think twice during my nine months there they managed to rope some teen-aged boy into playing drums. As can be imagined, the music was often out of key or out of tempo. Often the various instruments were each playing in their own tempo. Blending was unheard of. Much of the music was terribly simplistic -- and some of it was simply terrible. But I don't think I've ever enjoyed a music group more. Every single person wanted to be there and loved what they were doing no matter how poorly they were doing it.
I've also been meaning to ask an etiquette question brought on my a Bones episode that aired about a month ago. I'm wondering why everyone wanted Brennan to keep her knowledge about Daisy from Sweets. I would want to know if someone I was seeing was cheating on me and I tend to think you should tell a friend if you suspect their partner of cheating. Is there something I'm missing?
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 09:48 pm (UTC)