A Little Like My Dad

When I was in high school, I was our ward's choir accompanist. My Dad was the director and we usually had about four people show up. The four people weren't quite equal in talent. My mom was always there as a soprano and she has a beautiful voice. There were usually two other women, one would sing soprano with my mom but was quiet and the alto was Deanne who was a little off her rocker. The fourth ward was a tad defunct. They had split the wards when I was a freshman to create a new one and it seemed fourth ward got the short end of the stick. My point being, our choir wasn't very good. My Dad kept up the tenor part by singing loudly but he wasn't facing the congregation and I'm not certain about the bass section. Sometimes there were more but the four were the core.

I can be a bit of a musical snob. Not always but sometimes and in high school I was. I was in Saturday's Children (have you ever heard of a more lame name for a choir?), a select mixed choir of 16 and had certain expectations. (Looking back and comparing to bigger school choirs now like my sister Maureen's - we weren't even very good). It exasperated me when we would run through a song a couple of times and my dad would say, "Good. O.K. Now let's turn to . . ." We didn't go through parts, the song didn't seem polished. I wondered if my dad was deaf or just didn't care.

Now I realize it was neither. I think he was just wise. No amount of rehearsal can produce a sound better than the singers making it. And rather than deflating each of the singers and the choir as a whole, he wore those rosy colored glasses and didn't dwell on the small stuff (like intonation, breathing, vowel sounds etc.). He wanted our little choir to convey the spirit of the song and enjoy singing. The amazing thing is, that little group usually pulled it off and sounded decent during the performance. My mom joked that he parented like he directed the choir. He just willed us to turn out without worrying about all the details - and we did!

Last night was the most humbling practice in my stake choir directing history. I was very unprepared and it showed. I ordered an arrangement of Army's of Helaman late and was very lucky in it being delivered yesterday at around 4:30 pm. I looked through it and then ran to the copy center to make copies of Love Is Spoken here (the other song we are doing). Jay was on call yesterday so I had to get sitters for my kids and I called the old reliables. I picked up the twins at 6:00 and left for the stake center. I figured I could staple there and run through the songs once more.

I always start right on time (why reward lateness?) and only had three singers at 6:30. My accompanist wasn't even there yet (probably since I had only asked her the day before) so I was over at the piano and it just wasn't going well. When my accompanist showed up ten minutes later, I had one tenor, two basses, one alto, four sopranos and three children (all of the songs are combined with a children's choir). By the end of choir, I only had one more alto. It was a sad, sorry practice. And there is only so much you can do. We worked on each song but they didn't sound great. Not that the singers were bad but you just don't sound good when you have numbers like that. There is no balance and none of the three men there were super confident singers. I learned that the poor attendance was most likely due to the Rubber Chicken Game(which is the annual rivalry basketball game between the two high schools on the South Hill). I'm hoping so. I will also make a lot of personal phone calls with personal invitations. But I'm not panicky. Even if that little group is all I'm going to get, then perhaps I can just will it to turn out like some of the historical fourth ward choirs. In this regard, an in many others, I'm hoping I can be a little like my dad.