Dear friends,
Thank you so much for allowing us to have 3 Wednesday nights this week to prepare more fully for our DAWN OF REDEEMING GRACE on Sunday. While tonight's rehearsal did not sweep us away as yesterday's did, we all remained calm and focused, and continued to do everything we could to grow and build. I am inspired by your discipline and commitment to our choir, even in this very hectic and busy season. By the time dinner on Sunday comes along, I hope that we will all feel that every second we have spent together (even the challenging ones) will have been totally worth it, and then some.
As much as the amazing acoustics of our sanctuary beautify our singing for the listeners, singing in the sanctuary of First-Plymouth (from the perspective of a singer in the choir) can be a challenge. It is not possible to hear others-- even those very close by-- as well as one can in our wonderful choir room. We will begin our rehearsals tomorrow and Sunday in the choir room to help us to establish our singing 'space' as a company of singers. We have to trust, then, that once we get to the sanctuary we don't have to sing differently in terms of dynamic or production-- in other words, we don't have to sing softer or louder to hear or be heard. We don't have to sing with less breath energy or space or more tone or less diction. We keep spinning the tone, moving the air with a quiet confidence, intensifying at every dynamic change, making our vowels taller and taller, sharing the vowels and consonants with every other person in our row and section and zipe code(!), inviting our tone to be richer and warmer, improving our pitch continually. Pitch in your section will never improve by singing louder or heavier (even on the absolute right pitch). Pitch will always improve when one is aware of defying gravity on descending lines, continually improving pitch on repeated notes, and uniting in cadences-- settling at a spinning, soft, sweet, warm, beautiful note.
I once was visiting a church which was doing a major renovation to its organ. There were pieces and parts all over the place, and just a few of the stops were playing from the console. One of the organ builders brought a flue pipe up to me and blew on it and said, "I'm still trying to figure out what this pipe wants to do." That was a very profound statement to me, and it resonates with me on a musical and spiritual level. He wasn't trying to make the pipe sound the way he wanted it to. He was trying to figure out what the pipe organically, uniquely, was called to be. He believed that there was a most amazingly beautiful quality to the pipe he had in his hand, and it was up to him to figure how to get whatever obstructions or distractions or disguises were in the way for it to sound its best. That's how I think about choir voices too. Some conductors work hard to take all the colour and uniqueness out of the singers to create unity of sound. What this does is minimize everyone's voice. It can work-- sometimes well, at least in particular repertoire. My idea is that in a choir like ours, the key really is that our 'smaller voices' will sing freely, richly, and warmly to meet the 'bigger voices' so that no one has to shout, no one has to whisper, and no one has to have any tension from being true to the best their instrument can sound. Everyone gathers then in creating a voluptuos, colorful, unified tone that has many rich waves of beauty inside of it. Everyone shares in the wholeness of the sound. Tonight, at one point, I encouraged the middle of the men's section to sing more fully in a unison line of LOST IN THE NIGHT. It made a huge difference as it gave some of the "smaller" voices some freedom to share their sound, and it also encouraged some of the bigger voices to be more actively aware of the whole (because they had something richer, warmer, and more beautiful to hear and become a part of!). WOW! It is all very magical the way choral sound happens. Think about it, If EVERYONE honestly sings mf when the composer suggests mf, there will be no big voices, and no small voices. There will just be beautiful, rich, warm, mf voices. We all matter! It takes all of us to make it whole! It takes all of us being open to the idea that there is a way our pipes should sound, and be open to creating a space inside and around our voice to enable it. We can't push or project a good sound ever. We can only invite and enable it by living richly in our space and making anything we contribute our most beautiful possible offering.
Words and images that will help us find what our pipes want to do-- softer, sweeter, warmer, more beautiful, breath, space, openness, wholeness, unity, rich, flowing, spinning, soaring, sighing, sharing, living in the sound, breathing together, creating a space for the spirit, trust, radiate, bodies free, freedom, sparkle, passionate, communicative, gathering in the sound. release, inflate, allow the air in, opera vowels, cleansing breath, listening, chocolate
Words and images that will hold us back-- push, force, louder, aggressive, holding back, tension, shallow, spread, Kmart, dudley-do-right, quick breath, minimize, tight, stiff
What happened Wednesday was we experienced in abundance what our choir as a collective set of beautiful, unique pipes wants to do. We were free. We trusted one another. We found our space. We stayed within the sound and lived inside the sonorities. It was magical and inspiring! If we got in trouble, we tried to fix it-- not by being louder and more "right"-- but by being softer, sweeter, warmer, and more aware of how beautiful it could be if we all did it together.
I treasure this opportunity to take such a journey with you-- not only through learning a set of wonderful pieces for a program, but through the evolutional process of finding our voice as a choir. Everytime we are together, we grow...sometimes it's just harder to hear it. We are always assured that God is with us on our journey, helping us each and all find out what our pipes want to do. Let's make every sound we make tomorrow more beautiful than the one before!
Grace and peace,
TT
