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i do have things in my life that are not my kid
Following the sudden death last summer of my chorus's music director, this year and next we're having guest conductors for each concert cycle while a nationwide (worldwide, for all I know) search determines who will be our next boss for real. There are four concerts per year, but I've only really done two of them. I punked out of last fall's concert after the first one or two rehearsals because my work was going bananas and I couldn't promise to be there on time reliably or indeed ever, plus I was eight months pregnant and ultimately self-care turned out to be the better way to go; and having had the baby on November 23 of course there was no chance I was going to do a Christmas concert in the second week of December. So I was back for the spring concert, which was led by a local guy who is not unknown to us and who I think a lot of people had pre-existing negative feelings about?, but from whom I learned a lot and in fact would welcome opportunities to sing for him again in the future. (Something about the British choral tradition, man. These Church of England guys have a style I seem to respond to.)
We're doing the summer concert now, led by a young guy who is very demanding and take-no-crap in a way that I think a lot of chorus members may not be liking. I admit sometimes his tone is a little bit ... hypercritical of amateurs, let's say. Nothing he says is wrong but it wouldn't kill him to be a little gentler about how he says it? Although he may be softening from one week to the next. But he's certainly the most obvious example (barring the Christmas concert leader, whom I never met) of how having these guest conductors separates the wheat from the chaff in a lot of ways? Our late lamented music director was, let me be clear, a brilliant musician and conductor whose loss is keenly felt throughout the local musical community, but he may have been a little hypocritical of amateurs, if you know what I mean, where people would get entrenched in bad habits and he wouldn't or couldn't or didn't have the heart to insist that they shape up or ship out. I don't know if this current guest leader is going to drive away people who don't like his style, and I don't know how much overlap there is between people who don't like his style and people who struggle to learn the music to a high standard or even match pitches. I am not alone in being a person who does not struggle to do either of these things. This guy's first rehearsal, I left early because I wasn't feeling well; the following week I was there but sitting over in the sick-bay area with a migraine, not singing; the following week was the first night of Passover so I missed a soprano-and-alto sectional that he wasn't leading anyway. Then last week and this week I was there, shutting up when he was giving directions and singing the right notes probably 90% of the time (and visibly watching the beat - what a concept! - and correcting myself when I sang something wrong). It's a sometimes depressingly small group of people who meet these qualifications.
So just now I got an e-mail from our operations manager asking me and two others if we'd take some small solo parts in the main work we're preparing for this concert (a world premiere commissioned by our late previous boss, incidentally). I don't precisely recognize the name of the other soprano, whom they're asking to take the sop1 part, but I'd be surprised if it isn't who I think it is and I just don't know her very well, a fine singer with a bigger and warmer voice than mine (so it makes sense to put me on sop2, which is not a mezzo part at all but just lower in the chord); and the alto is our resident countertenor, hands down the best singer in the alto section. Put another way: if the other soprano is who I think it is [eta:Oh, huh, she's got a photo linked to her e-mail address and it isn't who I thought it was at all, which just goes to show that we're none of us the only ones who can do anything, doesn't it? - and I wonder what has happened to the singer I thought we were talking about], I'm really pleased to be considered to be the third member of a group that consists of her and that particular alto. And there are only really two ways I could have got this gig: (1) by the guest conductor asking our chorus master and accompanist, who know all of us, who they'd recommend for the solo parts - not impossible, but it doesn't seem to be his style; or (2) by the guest conductor saying to our chorus master and accompanist (and possibly ops manager), based on our rehearsal comportment and evident abilities, something like "That singer and that one and that one - I don't know their names, but they're the ones I want."
\o/
We're doing the summer concert now, led by a young guy who is very demanding and take-no-crap in a way that I think a lot of chorus members may not be liking. I admit sometimes his tone is a little bit ... hypercritical of amateurs, let's say. Nothing he says is wrong but it wouldn't kill him to be a little gentler about how he says it? Although he may be softening from one week to the next. But he's certainly the most obvious example (barring the Christmas concert leader, whom I never met) of how having these guest conductors separates the wheat from the chaff in a lot of ways? Our late lamented music director was, let me be clear, a brilliant musician and conductor whose loss is keenly felt throughout the local musical community, but he may have been a little hypocritical of amateurs, if you know what I mean, where people would get entrenched in bad habits and he wouldn't or couldn't or didn't have the heart to insist that they shape up or ship out. I don't know if this current guest leader is going to drive away people who don't like his style, and I don't know how much overlap there is between people who don't like his style and people who struggle to learn the music to a high standard or even match pitches. I am not alone in being a person who does not struggle to do either of these things. This guy's first rehearsal, I left early because I wasn't feeling well; the following week I was there but sitting over in the sick-bay area with a migraine, not singing; the following week was the first night of Passover so I missed a soprano-and-alto sectional that he wasn't leading anyway. Then last week and this week I was there, shutting up when he was giving directions and singing the right notes probably 90% of the time (and visibly watching the beat - what a concept! - and correcting myself when I sang something wrong). It's a sometimes depressingly small group of people who meet these qualifications.
So just now I got an e-mail from our operations manager asking me and two others if we'd take some small solo parts in the main work we're preparing for this concert (a world premiere commissioned by our late previous boss, incidentally). I don't precisely recognize the name of the other soprano, whom they're asking to take the sop1 part, but I'd be surprised if it isn't who I think it is and I just don't know her very well, a fine singer with a bigger and warmer voice than mine (so it makes sense to put me on sop2, which is not a mezzo part at all but just lower in the chord); and the alto is our resident countertenor, hands down the best singer in the alto section. Put another way: if the other soprano is who I think it is [eta:Oh, huh, she's got a photo linked to her e-mail address and it isn't who I thought it was at all, which just goes to show that we're none of us the only ones who can do anything, doesn't it? - and I wonder what has happened to the singer I thought we were talking about], I'm really pleased to be considered to be the third member of a group that consists of her and that particular alto. And there are only really two ways I could have got this gig: (1) by the guest conductor asking our chorus master and accompanist, who know all of us, who they'd recommend for the solo parts - not impossible, but it doesn't seem to be his style; or (2) by the guest conductor saying to our chorus master and accompanist (and possibly ops manager), based on our rehearsal comportment and evident abilities, something like "That singer and that one and that one - I don't know their names, but they're the ones I want."
\o/