CJ Replay: The Value of Making Music

    “If you are open to all the good that will come out of music-making, you will be surprised at all that will come your way.  Within the music is a deep wellspring of energy. Return to the singing, to the performing, to the rehearsing when you are low. It will give you strength. Notice the tension, the fear. Be quiet and watch how in the middle of the music-making there is no fear. If you give yourself over to it, it will take the place of the negativity because it is boundlessly positive. This reverence for the glories of the choral art is self-sustaining. With age, it gets even better because you drop the fear. That is why conductors drop dead on the podium. It is that good-a muse impossible to leave. With age and exposure to more and more beauty, as you let down your barriers, the world comes rushing in.”
    “Paying attention to the music-making will change you. You will become malleable. Things you would never dream of doing, you will do. Be watchful – watchful of habits, watchful of how you are affecting your choir. Base yourself in the joy of music-making, and inexplicably, you will change. You will change others. This is a way to face your fear. This is quite a gift we’ve been given: the power to share beauty with others. In this therapeutic model, the audience is secondary. It is those we touch weekly who will change us.”

(from the Choral Journal Article “Prickly Puzzles and Daunting Dilemmas: Facing Fate, Fear and Family, Part 1,” by Edward Cetto.)