Come, Ye Disconsolate

Tonight I had dinner with one of my oldest friends. When I started to work on my Master's Degree at Auburn University I became friends with a senior Music Education major named John Baker. At the end of that year we both moved to jobs teaching choral music in south Georgia. A few years later we both moved to south Alabama. Over all these years we've remained good friends, and now after nearly 30 years, we've seen each other's kids grow up and listened to each other's choirs. And it was good to have the chance to reflect on events in our careers.

Without doubt, the most memorable event in my friendship with John happened on March 1, 2007. That was the day that the 2007 Alabama All-State Choir rehearsals began at Samford University in Birmingham. Two of my kids had auditioned and been selected, so I was thrilled that the event was happening so near my office, and I was hanging around to listen. It wasn't long until I ran into John, and we had lunch together.

Right after we finished eating lunch, John's cell phone rang, and both his life and career changed dramatically. The band director at his school was calling to tell John that their school, Enterprise High School, had just been hit by a powerful tornado. Everything was destroyed, and John needed to try to locate his two sons who were at the school.

In the chaos that followed, John found his sons and his wife, and tried to figure out whether to return with his 20 students who were attending All-State. They didn't really know whether their homes would be there when they got there. As the dust cleared and the clean-up began, they found that several students had been lost as the building collapsed, including two students who were members of John's chorus.

As John and I talked every few days, it was evident that the devastation had left a deep wound in the lives of everyone in Enterprise. John's students met to decide how best to honor their fallen classmates, and decided that the best thing to do was to keep singing. They attended a national Show Choir competition a few days later and won first place, receiving a prolonged ovation from the crowd of competitors who wanted so badly to help in some way. They spontaneously took up money and sent the Enterprise chorus home with a nest-egg to use in rebuilding their choral library. Not long afterward, two of the largest churches in Atlanta combined to present a benefit concert, with hundreds of singers and members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (who donated their playing!), and featuring the Enterprise Chorus.

Like so many people, I wished for something to do that might help. Since I think in hymns, my mind was drawn to an old, little-used hymn that had meant a lot to me in difficult times, "Come, Ye Disconsolate."

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish,

Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;

Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,

Hope when all others die, fadeless and pure!

Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,

“Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure.”

Here see the Bread of Life, see waters flowing

Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.

Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing

Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

I wrote an arrangement of the hymn and dedicated it to the students of Enterprise High School's Chorus. I sent a copy to John, to get his approval before I showed it to anyone. He called to say that they were learning it and planning to sing it. I asked when and where so I could attend, and he told an astonishing story. He said that after the tornado, President Bush had visited the site, which I had seen on the news. But what was surprising was the fact that the President had continued to correspond with the principal, Mr. Reyner, to ask about the progress being made in restoring the school. And Mr. Reyner and President Bush had arranged for John's chorus to give a special concert in the East Room of the White House. So they were planning to give the first performance of "Come, Ye Disconsolate" in that concert. I used my frequent flyer miles and went with them, accompanying the piece. I'll never forget the sight of John and Mr. Reyner, who had shepherded these students through such trying days, standing arm in arm, and leading them together in their Alma Mater in the East Room of the White House.

Meanwhile, I presented the piece in a conference of church musicians, and the President of Morningstar Music Publishers was there. He approached me and offered to publish it. This year it's one of their best-sellers.

http://http//www.morningstarmusic.com/viewitem.cfm/item_id/50-2602

I know this has been a long story, but John and I have a long friendship. And I've seen many years' worth of students from Enterprise, Alabama, who had richer lives because they had a great choral director. This year they were invited to be the featured chorus in the nationally televised Lighting of the National Tree. Once again I went to Washington, and saw these triumphant young singers give a great performance before a national audience. The audience couldn't have guessed what these beautiful performers had been through so recently. To have played a small part in the most dramatic chapter in that long history has been one of my greatest privileges.

The Path to the Moon

Today I ran into some friends whose kids have grown up across the street from mine. Their oldest, Daniel, whom I've known since he was a little boy, is a junior in college. Their next child is a daughter who is a senior in high school, and she will be my daughter's roommate when they go to college next year.

Back when these kids were small, and we all lived across the street from each other, my wife was the music educator at the school the kids attended. One of the songs Daniel learned in chorus was Eric Thiman's "The Path to the Moon." Daniel had a beautiful voice, which matched his gentle personality. One year, on his mother's birthday, he came in from a baseball game and stood in the kitchen, sweaty and dirty, and sang "The Path to the Moon" as a birthday gift for his mother. She asked my wife for a copy of the music so she could remember that wonderful gift. It was a gift so precious that it took a long time for us to be able to talk about it without being prevented by the lumps in our throats.

When I asked after Daniel this morning I learned how he was succeeding in college, and getting ready for the exams necessary for applications for medical school. I asked his mother if she thought he remembered "The Path to the Moon," and she replied that she knew he did, because he had sung it for her again over Christmas holidays. She also said that she had the sheet music in their family's safe-deposit box, among their other irreplacable items.

As parents and as music educators we treasure a lot of things about the children we raise and the children we teach. For me, this story illustrates a near-perfect combination of memorable things: Wonderful parents, a caring teacher, and a precious ten-year-old boy who "longed to sail the path to the moon." And although it was surely a lot of fun, I'd bet that neither Daniel nor his parents remember much about the baseball game he played that night. But there is nothing in heaven or earth that could make them forget a note of that beautiful singing.

Choir Tour 09

Planning and executing a travel event is one of the greatest pleasures of being a choir director. My earliest memory of taking a choir on tour involved a youth choir from the church where I served as summer youth director in 1981. I remember the bus going through a puddle at our first bathroom stop and shorting out its electrical system.

While I have a lot of memories of choir tours over the years, my current assistant was a youth in my previous church, and went on a lot of trips with me. And she remembers every detail of every trip. We had a long discussion on the bus yesterday, returning from this year's trip, and she helped me recall kids I had forgotten and repertoire I hadn't thought about in years. It was easy to see from her vivid memories that these experiences are very meaningful to our singers.

On this year's trip we went to New Orleans, where we sought to sing in recovering churches who lost so much to the flooding after hurricane Katrina. We were helped by a former member who lives in New Orleans now, and thanks to her planning we were able to fit a lot of things into a short time. We attended a couple of Mardi Gras Parades, visited the French Quarter, and saw a lot of sights. The people of the churches expressed a lot of joy and pleasure at being led in worship by a choir of teenagers, and hopefully they were encouraged in their challenging journey of recovery.

One of my most meaningful memories of a choir tour came years ago at another church. One of my closest kids and best singers came to me just before we started singing for a group of mentally challenged adults at a group home. He was upset, and said he wasn't sure he could sing that night. When I asked why, he said, "Well, you know that I'm adopted, right?" I replied that I did. He said, "Well, the reason I'm adopted is that my mother was mentally retarded. When she had a child they put it up for adoption. I was that child. And I can't help wondering if my mother will be in the audience tonight. She would be about the age of these people."

He sang. In fact, he sang his heart out. We'll never know, of course, if by some weird coincidence his birth mother might have heard him sing. But the point of the story is the context of honesty and surprise that were presented by the fact that we were on a choir tour in the first place. I learned a crucial part of the history of this young man, a kid with whom I was very close but obviously hadn't understood completely. And he came face to face with a reality that he was just getting old enough to understand. It helped him to voice his concerns. He wasn't really worried about singing. He was unprepared to see the face of his birth mother.

I returned last night from another tour, and everyone collected their things and jumped into their parents' cars. Of course, I went home to bed. During the night I heard my text message ringtone, and got up to see who was texting. It was the singer who had given us a lot of cause for worry a year ago because of some choices she made. Thanks to her great parents, our great Youth Minister, and her own determination, she has become one of our strongest and most mature leaders. And she was texting to thank me for taking her on this trip. While I know that the students were all glad to have gone, and some were even grateful, she was the only one to go out of her way to communicate her gratitude. Her text message communicated a lot more than "Thank you." It said, "I'm back, you can count on me." And it said, "Thanks for not giving up on me."

When we work hard to plan and execute a big project, the work and the success are certainly reward enough. But extra glimpses of the best and truest part of a student singer are priceless, and somehow traveling and singing create a context in which those moments can happen.

Musical Entrepreneurs

I have a friend who took a great idea and carried it to fruition in an example of great American entrpreneurship. We all hear stories frequently about people who pursue their dreams to start their own businesses, or to multiply their success by opening new locations, only to fall short. It seems that the successful entrepreneur is the exception to the rule, and the failure is the rule.

So this is a story worth telling; a guy has a great idea to provide a needed service. He gets the right people involved, and gets them to believe in his vision. He works very hard to make it happen. And it succeeds beyond his wildest expectations.

Here's the unusual part. This great exhibition of business acumen didn't produce a dime in profit, nor was there any financial profit motivation behind the idea or the business plan. This was much bigger than that. The profit came in bringing singing opportunities to the school children of a town in south Alabama, where successive budget cuts had eliminated them.

This great idea, which eventually came to be known as "Encore", was simple: children need the joy of singing, and they also need the side-effects of improved creativity and higher order thinking, participation in group activity that is non-competitive, knowledge of the American folk-song canon, and myriad other benefits.

My friend, Terry Taylor, started as a volunteer in a local school. He would go to the school and sing, play recorders, and teach about music once a week. Feeling the strain of exhaustion after several years, he wanted to find a way to multiply his efforts. So he decided that a team of volunteers could accomplish that goal, and the strain of exhaustion he was feeling paled in comparison to the hard work that lay ahead as "Encore" was born.

At its heart, entrepreneurism consists of an "idea" person who gets a vision for a new enterprise, and a "manager" who comes into the picture to help carry out the project in a way that becomes viable. This is the model that was followed with "Encore." Once Terry had articulated the vision, the details began to be managed by a professional organizer, a local music educator, a local principal, and the leader of the local Cultural Arts Center. All of them embraced the vision and worked to make their part of it successful. And 150 volunteers emerged from all over the community to establish the work force necessary to carry out the vision.

Consequently, every one of 4000 children in the school system got to sing and dance. Teachers reported improved behavior and learning. PTA's reported higher attendance. And the school system, seeing the great benefits of "Encore", announced that they would hire music educators for these elementary schools.

As a result of the vision of one man, and the hard work of a team of volunteers, a community rose up and gave their children the gift of singing.

But that happy ending is only the beginning. Last weekend a group of interested leaders in the American Choral Directors Association gathered (at their own expense, mirroring "Encore") and asked a panel of the "Encore" leaders from Dothan, Alabama, to give a presentation about their successful program. The panel gave a concise and articulate picture of what it took to give singing to their children.

The ACDA leaders hope to embrace "Encore" and similar ideas that have come from a ground-swell of interest in meaningful educational improvement around the country. They believe that ACDA can become a catalyst for this kind of effort around the country, and are seeking ways to make it happen.

It is worth noting that members of our society don't do anything without music; we don't work, play, worship, drive, watch tv, or even listen to a voicemail answer the phone without a tune attached. In fact, even though all our actions lead to the obvious conclusion that music is very important to us, the only activity we regularly seek to accomplish without music is learning. It is unlikely that success will come from eliminating music from our children's most formative activity.

The "Encore" story illustrates that representatives from every part of the community recognized that the elimination of music from the curriculum was problematic, including the school administrators who had been forced to make that choice due to poor funding. And it also illustrates that one person's vision, translated into effective action, could change the situation. All of us who care deeply about the arts in our society can learn from this example, and move from passively watching in despair to actively seeking to become part of the solution.

Music in the Community: from Activity to Aspiration

(These remarks were given to a national meeting of Junior Leagues, many of whom have musical ensembles as part of the service they offer to their communities. I realize it's long, but I've been asked to post it.)

Communities like ours are full of music, and as much as the opposite may seem to be true, their music is hardly affected by an economic downturn. While decreasing government funds mean less financial support for the largest musical institutions, like symphony orchestras and opera companies, people in civic groups, churches and schools will continue to sing together and play their instruments. Band parents will sell a few more hot dogs and churches will hear familiar anthems a little more, but music will always go on.
What is it about music that creates this ubiquitous reality? Why is it that organizations that are geared toward the good of the community, like churches or Junior Leagues, will expend enormous effort and resources to provide music as part of the service they render?
Obviously, many conversations could be exhausted before we began to describe the attractiveness and necessity of the arts in our society. The truth is, we have music all around because we love music. It accompanies us on our journey, and the more important the journey, the more we need music. Think of the movies that reflect our modern life: people don’t fall in love, make love, or leave love behind without a sound track. Think of real life: in my life as a church musician, my job is to provide appropriate music for such things as the ancient religious practices of dedicating an infant to God, gathering people to prayer, or asking them to give their hard-earned money. Music accompanies all our important moments. And, because music is art, it is an inexhaustible source of both pleasure and challenge. Put succinctly, it is the best we can do.
My mentor, Robert Shaw, was fond of saying that the arts are the “flesh become word.” His reversal of the mystical biblical metaphor from the Gospel of John was intended to convey his belief that, among all our earthly activities, the ones that will survive us after we are gone are our efforts to create art.
We remember Leonardo and Michelangelo, but we have to read history to be reminded of Savanarola, the Florentine priest who was responsible for burning books, paintings, and other “pagan” extravagances in the town square. He sought to “save” society, but it was the artists who extended the influence of the Florentine Renaissance through the successive centuries.
Consequently, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that what we accomplish in our community-based artistic endeavors matters. It is obvious that our accomplishments matter to us, for we commit enormous time and effort to them. But I think they matter to our communities as well, for they add beauty and good will to the environment in which we live and share. And they are our only endeavors that stand to have a lasting impact beyond our mortal years.
A common misconception among spectators is that what we do is just another activity, like the spinning class or the book club. I would like for us to focus our attention on our responsibility for making sure that our singing groups aren’t just activities, equal among other activities, but rather aspirational endeavors that are life-giving to society and rewarding to us as participants.
How can we move from activity to aspiration?
First, let’s consider technique. The earliest warning sign that a musical endeavor should be viewed as just a time-occupying activity is the absence of appropriate technique. How does a rehearsal begin? Is there an atmosphere of expectation, punctuality and professionalism that indicates that music-making is taken seriously? I can think of situations in which a musical director or teacher has jettisoned the idea of technical musical training because the members of their group were having too enjoyable a time performing at a low technical level. These directors are afraid that the fun will be lost if they work on vocal technique or music-reading skills. I would suggest that the fun will begin when these challenges are met, and that the rewards of successful singing and music-reading are far greater and more fun than the feeling of limping through the musical forest humming a happy tune.
Our singers need to regularly experience the things that will lead to vocal success. An excellent director will devise warm-up exercises that build strong habits with the muscle groups involved in singing, and that create attention to tone, pitch and uniformity of vowels. These can be fun in themselves if thoughtfully planned, and can increase the pleasure derived from the accomplishments of the impending rehearsal.
In my brief experience with the Choral Group of the Junior League of Birmingham, I have seen a model for this approach. Their desire for excellent vocal technique never changes, whether they are rehearsing for a classical program or a show-tune program. It is part of the reason they work hard. It is aspiration.
Next, let’s discuss repertoire. In my world of church music this is an explosive topic. Whole religious denominations have changed over the issue of the musical repertoire used in the services. It is no less explosive for music educators. Schools hire and fire choral directors based on their inclination toward pop-oriented Show Choir music, or classical music. People seem to have very strong emotional attachments to the music they hear. It could become another day-long conversation for us. But I don’t want to divert into that subjective discussion. I would guess that the singers whose directors are here today feel a need to sing in a variety of musical styles, just as I do in my position in the church.
Rather, I’d like for us to consider repertoire as it relates to our formative idea of moving from activity to aspiration. In other words, if the music we select can be performed easily, as a kind of activity, that is different from repertoire choices that cause us to aspire to sing them. Repertoire is the word that describes the place where the challenge lies for us. And, while style is an important factor, there is aspirational repertoire in every style of choral music.
When I am choosing music for a choir I direct, I am thinking of a balance between the need to accomplish excellence in performance in a finite period of rehearsal time, and the need for the piece to lead the choir to a new place in their journey toward musical excellence. For example, if the piece is a Renaissance motet, I am considering whether it might have opportunities to teach about “musica ficta”, or antiphonal singing, and I know my choir is going to improve in the areas of phrasing and linear singing. If it is Baroque or Classical, I am looking for opportunities to sing with orchestra, and learn about that particular articulation and acoustical challenge. If it is Romantic, we are learning about expression. The twentieth-century repertoire is presenting learning opportunities related to scale systems and unresolved dissonances. In folk-songs and ethnic music we are learning a sociological lesson, and in pop styles we are experiencing rhythmic varieties like syncopation, and harmonic challenges like crunchy jazz chords.
In other words, repertoire choices are far more important than just our judgment about their crowd-pleasing possibilities. Because music is art, each piece we choose should have levels of appropriateness, of which the most superficial is its immediate attractiveness. We have already discussed the aspiration for better vocal technique. Our repertoire choices are directly related to that aspiration, and should help us meet the challenge of training our groups to aspire to better, more meaningful and rewarding singing. Repertoire is the part of our challenge that most directly relates to the community’s need for beauty and art. We can help our community aspire to be a better place in which to live through our repertoire choices.
The third area of aspiration I would like to mention is the idea of musical collaboration. As I have become older and more experienced as a musical leader, I have grown less inclined to view my career as a kingdom. I can remember many professional conversations in which phrases are used such as “my singers,” “my choir,” “my concert.” For many music professionals, we have invested so much personal energy into our work that we start to view the organizations we direct as an extension of ourselves. There is no doubt that a musical ensemble begins to take on some of the characteristics of its leader, and to the degree that the director is psychologically and musically healthy, that is a good part of the process. But we must not isolate ourselves into little kingdoms that are artificially competitive with each other. We must not feel threatened by the success of our colleagues. And our communities will be stronger if we will occasionally combine our efforts, rather than only performing on our own.
Here in Birmingham there is a lot of excellent choral music going on. Several well-known and high-powered conductors direct as many good choirs. But I am happy to report that there is a great sense of mutual respect and support. Tonight I will be singing in the chorus for the Alabama Symphony’s performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana. The chorus will include the Birmingham Concert Chorale, of which I am a member, and the choruses from three area colleges. This collaboration is good for all the organizations, and especially good for the community.
Singers from the Junior League of Birmingham joined me for concerts in Birmingham and New York last year, and will be with me in Vienna this summer. Those concerts also included people from other choruses in Birmingham, including high school, college and adult singers. And we’re currently planning for Shanghai in 2010. Whether I am singing in the chorus or conducting, it is obvious to me that the collaboration of other professionals and hard-working singers makes me a better musician, and creates a great artistic atmosphere for Birmingham.
Musicians need each other, because it is difficult musically and financially for us to aspire. And our communities need for us to need each other. They are a more willing audience and funding source if they feel that we have put our egos aside, and are aspiring to great responsibility as well as great musical accomplishment.
Last year, as we prepared to sing the Mozart Requiem, a friend of mine who is Jewish began to attend my church choir rehearsals on Wednesday night. An experienced singer, he wanted to enjoy the Mozart, so he became an adjunct member of the church choir for a while. And during that time he engaged us in an interesting and enlightening discussion of the interred Jews in the Terezin Concentration Camp who, without any sheet music, and with a piano that had no legs, learned the Verdi Requiem by rote and performed it for their Nazi captors as a means of staying alive. They didn’t subscribe to the ancient Christian fear-mongering of the Requiem text, and they didn’t necessarily know one another, but they combined their efforts because the presentation of art fed their souls and calmed their captors.
This is similar in my mind to the artistic accomplishment of the African-American Spiritual. Enslaved people singing because words alone couldn’t possibly express their most inner needs and feelings created an art-form that we can only begin to understand and render successfully.
These singers needed each other, and they needed to sing, and collaboration happened. Less dramatic reasons exist for all of us to collaborate. Last Saturday I was asked to plan and lead a service at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the sight of the terrorist bomb that took the lives of four little girls as they attended church on September 15, 1963. The service was attended by members and clergy from twenty or so traditionally white and black religious groups, who gathered to express their desire to unify in worship and service to the poor. President Jimmy Carter was the speaker, and singers combined from four area choirs. Dancers came from Troy University, and an entire program was created around the idea of unity.
The congregation was inspired and challenged by the art and the words of the service. But those of us who collaborated to lead the service had a once-in-a-lifetime existential jolt. We wondered, “What took us so long?” when we found such kinship in singing with people who live a few miles and a whole universe away from us. Our collaboration will lead to future partnerships, and our musical enterprise will change our community for the better. Together, we will all aspire to be more musically and societally than we have been.
So let me end where I started. Music matters. And the effort we expend in our preparation to perform our music is an early indicator of the degree to which we realize how much it matters. Here is a story that describes what I mean. I had a friend named Judy who was an elementary music teacher in the town where I directed music at a church. At a young age Judy was diagnosed with cancer. She was told to prepare for difficult treatment with a low probability of success. So she went through the nausea, hair-loss and general “crumbiness” of chemotherapy while continuing to teach music to her students. Neither she nor her doctors expected her to complete the school year.
About six years later, after she had outlasted several doctors’ diagnoses, teaching music all the while, I heard that things had gotten worse, and that she really was in her last days. It was terribly sad news after she had beaten the odds for so long. And it was made worse by the fact that we were entering the Christmas season.
As a church musician, I was terribly busy with final preparations for our annual Christmas concert. It was an event that a large part of the community attended, and it featured a full orchestra and several choirs in a repertoire that alternated between classical pieces and Christmas carols.
At a certain moment in the program I would turn to lead the audience in singing “The First Nowell”, and when I did I noticed a lot of faces turned toward a spot in the balcony. They had a surprised look, as if something inappropriate was going on. So while I continued to conduct my eyes followed theirs, and I saw an unexpected sight in the balcony. There was my friend Judy, carrying her death sentence during Christmas, needing to spend every precious minute with loved ones and getting her affairs in order. And the thing that was attracting the attention of the other audience members was her singing. She was, to use a southern expression, rared-back, singing at the top of her lungs. She was singing her last “First Nowell”.
Judy needed music. In her singing, she was giving us her artistic last will and testament, and it included technique, a desire to hear her own voice singing her best and most, exercising her musical habits one last time. And it included the repertoire of a familiar, time-honored carol, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, sung to the best of her ability. And it included collaboration, taking precious moments from a life that, like most lives, was ending too soon, and spending it in a room filled with musicians and audience members, anonymously joining the song one last time. In Judy’s life it was too late for another time-consuming activity. But there was ample time for her to exhibit her musical and personal aspiration.
And so do we all need music. Our work as singers and directors is important because we are providing the life-giving soundtrack for the lives of people in our communities. We are making choices in our rehearsals and performances that can help to create peace in confusion, joy in despair, and steadiness in turbulence. And to the extent that we help performers and audiences to aspire, we can bring good to our world, both now and after we are gone.

Ensemble

In the world of music, we divide pieces into "solo" repertoire and "ensemble" repertoire. As a choral and orchestral conductor I exist in the "ensemble" part of the musical world. The music-making in which I participate always relies upon the combined efforts of more than one musician.
I recently experienced an ensemble effort that took the ideas of combined effort and collaboration to a new level for me. Last Saturday I was privileged to be in charge of conceiving and directing a worship service for people from twenty or more different denominational groups, and featuring singers, instrumentalists, dancers and actors from several churches and a university. If any of these people had acted within the stereotype usually applied to performers, it could have been a dysfunctional service. Instead, the people involved all acted unselfishly and brought about a service with great meaning and impact. The theme of the service was unity, and it was both modelled and described by the people leading the service.
This coming weekend I will be singing in a chorus of 235 in a performance of "Carmina Burana" with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. I am a member of the Birmingham Concert Chorale, which is conducted by Philip Copeland of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and we will be joined by the choirs of Samford University, Birmingham Southern College, and the University of Montevallo. All three of these schools have long-standing reputations of high quality, and their respective choral directors, Tim Banks, Lester Siegel, and Robert Wright, are well-respected. This could be another opportunity for well-known and highly accomplished conductors to all seek recognition and acclaim. But at our first rehearsal together last night, the opposite was the case. In fact, these kinds of events happen frequently in Birmingham, and it is alway refreshing to see that the area conductors are friends and colleagues who act in a mutually supportive way.
Birmingham has a great tradition of outstanding choral music in a variety of school, college, church and community settings. But it is remarkably free of any jealousy or negativity between the conductors who build these traditions. It is a pleasure to be part of this environment.
Ensemble singing is a pleasure, whether within one ensemble, or as part of a combination of existing ensembles, when the directors and singers have an attitude of collaboration and unselfishness.