Stick Time: Never Lose Your Wonderment

We all start life as babies, babbling incomprehensibly.  Eventually, we learn to speak.  Then we sing.  After that, if we’re lucky, we join our voices with others to create textures of astonishing beauty.  (The comparison is so striking that we highlighted it in From Babbling to Beauty, a short “commercial” promoting the 2012 ACDA divisional conferences.)  It is, to one’s way of thinking, miraculous.

 

Yes, yes, of course, we clearly understand the physiology and pedagogy that combine to make singing possible; to say nothing of the myriad variables that must be successfully combined to create choral music.  But for those of us in the arts (or for anyone with a soul), understanding the scientific foundations of the art should reduce none of the wonder.

 

There are, of course, times when we must approach our craft with a certain degree of surgical detachment.  Those technical moments, must never be simply mechanical – rather, they must always be informed by a yearning, a burning, to facilitate beauty.

 

That said, listen; and be filled anew with wonderment . . .