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I'd like to share a personal anecdote, and ask for your responses. What do you think about the picture above?
 
It is a picture of the Mägi Ensemble (I am pictured here, with the white scarf), walking onstage to participate in the Seattle Sings festival. It was a 3-day long festival featuring 34 area choirs, and we were honored to sing. We performed well, and we were proud of our offering.
 
This was also one of those moments that sparked a flurry of conversation in our group: ONE OF OUR MEMBERS WAS WEARING A BABY.
 
We didn't even think twice about it. Many of us have had children, and brought those children with us to rehearsals, concerts, etc. This new mama is one of the most professional, capable, and talented singers I've worked with–you know, the one who always practices her music at home, sings all the right notes, starts working on things before we've even looked at them, excellent sight-reader, etc, etc, etc. I feel lucky when I stand next to her. Her now-five-month-old is a delight.
 
There were some in the audience for whom seeing a baby-wearing mama was an inspiration. We received plenty of positive feedback. One young woman told our director that she'd been unable to participate in choir since she had a child, but seeing our group, she was determined to make it work.
 
Some were confused. Understandably so; I'm sure they hadn't ever seen anything like it before, and it probably was a surprise.
 
Some were genuinely upset. How could she? How could she focus on singing while having her baby with her? How could we possibly rehearse with a baby around? What a distraction!
 
This last reaction was the surprising one for us. At our first rehearsal after the concert, we spent about half an hour talking about the difference in feedback. Should we educate our audiences in advance? What would that even look like? Should we pay for a babysitter for our new mama? Should we incorporate baby noises into all our repertoire?
 
In the end, we decided what was normal for us was the right way for us. We have, from the beginning, encouraged babies (and children) around the choir. They sometimes fuss, and sometimes need attention, but then we just step out and deal with it. We believe we are growing musical children, and exposing them to some pretty complex music at that.
 
What about your choirs? What are your policies about children and rehearsal?

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Comments

  1. Hmm, after scanning my keyboard and trying a few combinations, I can’t get it to work. I know how to do accents in Word, but not online…
     
    Thanks for your clarification that this discussion has to do with concerts proper. Since our performance was at a festival, it was a somewhat more informal atmosphere. Choirs were constantly rotating through the warmup room and onstage, people were getting up and down from their seats and talking to friends, and, moreover, no one had paid an entrance fee. The music was serious, but it wasn’t the type of atmosphere where a cough drew dirty glares. 
     
    I have a number of gigs coming up in November and December for which I’m already planning childcare right now, because there is not a chance I can have my daughter with me. One gig is a performance of Handel’s Messiah, partially memorized and staged, with orchestra and ballet dancers. The other gigs are thoughout December as a professional Christmas caroler, dressed in Victorian costume and standing in a tight quartet. Even though I think certain audiences would enjoy it (the other carolers certainly do; she comes to rehearsals with me and my husband every Sunday night and is as good as gold), it would be completely anachronistic to be wearing a baby for a performance! In this case, if I can’t find childcare, I can’t do the gig, and that’s life — and, that’s why there are subs and alternates in the organization.

  2. Thank you for elaborating and above all for not taking offence at my potentially-interpretable-as-hostile response. Different strokes, and all that — I suppose the main thing to take away here is that even if you and your group are comfortable with bringing a baby on stage, it will always come as a surprise/shock to the audience or part thereof, and the feedback will reflect this. It is also important to realize that the audience will not be able to make the distinction between a situation born (pun not intended) of necessity as in this case and a situation caused by parents of the who-could-possibly-object-to-the-presence-of-a-child-except-vicious-misanthropes school of thought. And of course there are such parents in audiences too, but such are the triumphs and tribulations of live performances. I should note for clarity that this discussion is relevant for concerts proper; church services and social occasions have a different dynamic, and the presence of children in such contexts is viewed very differently (also by me).
     
    Re umlauts: Your keyboard should have an accent key with a circumflex (^) and a trema (two dots). Press that key and then A, and you should get an A-umlaut.
     
    —
    Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
    Helsinki, Finland

  3. The “throwing things” disclaimer crept in because some of the most vitriolic and abusive comments online here in Finland come from a nationwide baby-themed chatroom whenever someone has the audacity to question conventional wisdom in infant care or, worse, criticize the practices of an individual posting there. But I digress. Back when our son was small, we either a) hired a babysitter through a child welfare organization that trains and certifies teenagers (high school students) for babysitting, or b) the choir hired a babysitter and booked a separate room during rehearsals in a period when there were several couples with small children in the choir, or c) failing all else, one of us skipped a rehearsal and stayed at home.
     
    —
    Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
    Helsinki, Finland
     

  4. Thank you for your kind words! I also can’t wait to hear what her little voice sounds like when she starts to sing! 🙂 She already makes these high little squeaks that sound quite musical, and she loves it when I sing a high soprano line right into her face; she just grins.

  5. Mr. Unterseher, thank you for your comment! When you were conducting us as we read through your lovely piece, I was actually holding my baby. However, part way through she began to fuss, and I quietly stepped out of the group and took her to the back of the room. I’m glad to hear that we weren’t disruptive or distracting to your conducting. 🙂 And great to hear about your experiences of your own children in rehearsal! It can be done, when it needs to be done!

  6. Hello Mr. Mantyjarvi! (I’m sorry, I don’t know how to get the umlauts!)
     
    I am the singer about whom this post was written. First of all, I’m a little bit in awe of you and your music, and the fact that you commented on this post. Thank you for your thoughts. Julie wrote this article with a very kind perspective on me and my daughter, and I want to share a little more from my perspective.
     
    I have been a singer for several years; I have only been a mother for five months, and I’m still figuring it out! Because my daughter is nursing, it is hard to leave her with anyone for long periods of time. This festival was an all-day event, but each choir was only performing for 20 minutes. Ideally, my husband would have been there with me to care for her while I was actually performing, but he had to be at a rehearsal for something else. I asked someone that I knew would be in the audience, if they would hold her during our performance. However, I had not been at the festival before, and I didn’t know how the timing of it worked. I didn’t see my caregiver there when the Magi Ensemble was called to warm up, so I wore my daughter, assuming I’d have another chance to go pass her off. However, we were upstairs, then we were downstairs, then we were onstage — I never got that chance. So the fact that I wore her during our peformance was accidental, not planned; however, my conductor Dr. Heather Garbes had said more than once that it would be totally fine to wear her onstage. At first it seemed like a joke, but then, it happened!
     
    What was it like for me to have her onstage? To be honest, it was stressful. As Julia L said above, even a normally calm baby (like mine) can randomly cry. I care about making the very best music that I can, and I didn’t want my child to “wreck” our performance. She did make a few noises, but they were mostly between songs. (She’s quiet when she’s listening to us sing; she loves it!) I felt that my own singing was just as good as it would have been without her. It was a relief when it was over, and that it had gone well.
     
    It was very interesting to hear feedback from the audience at the festival, and since the festival, and it has been about 90% positive. I am so thankful for the positive support of my director, the other singers in the Magi Ensemble, and the wider community of Seattle choral musicians.
     
    There are lots of hypothetical situations, but as the person who actually wore a baby in a concert, would I do it again? That depends. It depends on the director I am singing for, the audience, the environment, what is required of me, and how best I can take care of my baby’s needs. Will I insist that my children should unequivocally be welcomed in any and every situation? No. It is just not possible or appropriate in Western culture. Our societal age-segregation is a deeply entrenched part of our culture (unlike some others around the world).
     
    Who are the stakeholders in this situation? My baby, my fellow singers, my audience, and me.
    1. Is it good for my baby to be strapped onto me and hear my voice? Yes.
    2. Is it good for my fellow singers to have babies/children around for rehearsals/performances? That will depend on the group, but the Magi Ensemble has decided, resoundingly, yes.
    3. Is it good for my audience to see, and possibly hear, a baby during a choir concert? About 90% have said yes, and about 10% have said no. Multiple people said, “It was amazing! She never even made a peep!” — which I know to be untrue — she DID make a peep — but it obviously wasn’t noticeable and didn’t affect their experience of the concert!
    4. Is it good for me to have my baby with me while I sing? As I said before, I felt stressed and anxious, because I was concerned about what my audience would think. After the fact, having had SO much positive feedback, I think that I could do it again without as much stress and anxiety, depending on what I knew about the audience.
     
    I will be thinking about these four questions as any future situations come up. I am also keeping in mind that my baby is growing up fast. This was a precious memory we made together at the Seattle Sings festival, but within a few weeks she will start eating solid foods. She will become easier to leave with caregivers, and harder to carry on my body. Life changes fast. I believe choral music to be the most sublime form of music-making, and I hope to impart that love to her, as something she has known from her earliest days.
     
    Sincerely,
     
    Megan Gardner

  7. I should never dream of throwing anything at you! That’s just childish. 😉 Mr Mäntyjärvi, when you and your wife sang in the same choir, who did take care of your son? I ask because this is one of the problems in our area; extended family is not nearby, and other kinds of childcare are not reliable, not available, or not affordable for many.
     
    I’m so interested in the polarized responses; it really shows that choir draws together all types of people! 
     
    Also, just as a point of clarification, our choir is 12 professional singers. All women. We have had toddlers at rehearsals, but in another room playing with a dad or other responsible adult. 

  8. I am so glad someone else (Julia L) said this. I have silently (because it is potentially far more disruptive to speak up) endured any number of choir rehearsals where parents, however well-meaning and however dedicated to the group and to the music at hand, bring in infants or, worse, toddlers. Kids in rehearsal are at best a distraction and at worst a disruption and should never be brought into the rehearsal space at all. And before reading the OP I could never have imagined that any performer would even think of taking a baby on stage for a performance. If you are still reading this despite wanting to throw things at me, I should say I do not think it is fair on the kids either, particularly in the case of toddlers.
     
    For the record, my wife and I sang in the same choir when our son was little, and neither of us would ever have considered taking him into a rehearsal.
     
    —
    Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
    Helsinki, Finland

  9. I don’t have a problem with *wearing a baby*…it’s kinda sweet!  Those babies grow up loving music…..when a sitter flaked out on me on rehearsal night, I was known to bring the kids and often conducted with a baby on my hip.  I don’t think I could have done it while conducting a concert or an anthem but who knows, I might have if I needed to.
     
    When I was directing or choregraphing a show, I would often bring one of my sons with me because I wanted them to know what I did.  When my youngest was about 11, I brought him to a show I was co-directing and he planted himself next to my colleague who was playing the piano for rehearsal.  My *baby* now has a BM, MM and certificate in piano performance, is an adjunct piano prof at a local community college and is the accompanist for that former colleague who is directing the college chorale. And Doug remembered Ben coming to that rehearsal!

  10.  
     
    I wore my tiny daughter all the time for church music rehearsals, but I felt guilty when this particular pic was taken: I had just lost childcare for the dress rehearsal for the community choir I direct and was out of options.  I wish it would have occured to me that it wasn’t a big deal to have a tiny daughter on the back of me.  She had a ball and the choir thought it was cute– so much so that this pic was snapped and dumped on our social media site with the caption “Music Sub-Director says ‘Sargeant, get back in your place and warm-up!'”
     
    She and I did this for one of my other choirs, too, leading the national anthem at the HS when dad suddenly had to take her bigger brother to the doctor.  But again, I really wish it would have occured to me that it wasn’t a big deal either: for the choir, audience, or my kids.  It felt like a big deal for me because I thought “what director/chorister in their right mind wears a baby in a rehearsal/performance?”  We did it because we had to do it, but I wish I could personally go back and and take it in stride.  What’s the big deal?
     
    I submit this pic as well of a new dad singing at church.  Wished I were cool enough to smile, too.

  11. I also was at this very fine performance. I was, in fact, seated on the front row of the cathedral. When I first read Julie’s blog, I felt a bit guilty because my first response to her and to the director following the performance was that in 40 years as a member of ACDA and even more years than that as a participant or attendee of choral concerts, I had never experienced seeing a baby on stage. My reaction was one of an observation, not at all a judgement. First, my views on many things have changed over those 40 years. Case in point: last year as my church choir sang beautifully and expressively on an a cappella anthem, a dog barked from the balcony. Hey, we ARE in Seattle. As I thought about this, I realized that 30 or so years ago, I would have been angry and maybe even would have started over just to make my point! On that day, I was struck by how blessed we are by God’s many creatures and what an offering this was ot the totally organic soundscape. Within the past year, the doctor who owned Mervin the dog passed away. Usually I don’t repeat anthems for a about 4 years, but this past summer I felt compelled to repeat this anthem to commemorate Barry and Mervin and what they had meant to me and to the congregation. I actually missed the sound of Mervin’s barking! In a similar manner, I was touched at Seattle Sings, not only by the beautiful singing of the Mägi Ensemble, but by the image of a “madonna” with child making glorious music. After all, Suzuki said that the music education of a child begins 9 months prior to the birth of the mother. I hope that I am able to be around long enough to experience the musical growth of this lovely child who has felt his mother breathe and produce such marvelous tones. Isn’t that a wonderful gift?
     
    Allan Andrews

  12. I was at that performance, and did not notice the baby at all. I got to work with this choir in combination with three other choirs just after their performance, and I honestly could not tell you if the baby was there or not during that part, and I was on stage with them, conducting. 
     
    I once sang a funeral with a 2-month-old in a front pack. There are strategies: I timed the feeding of the baby so that she was sleeping when I sang. As she was used to hearing me sing, there was not an issue, she slept through the whole thing. Another time, I lost a babysitter half an hour before a staging rehearsal. Again, the children were very small, so I was able to put one in the front pack and the other in the back pack for the duration of the rehearsal, which was blessedly a relatively short one. I am sure that there were some raised eyebrows, but it was either that or cancel the rehearsal. Another thing that made that possible was the fact that there were only 4 of us in the rehearsal, 2 other characters and the stage director. Carrying them was the least distruptive choice.
     
    It was never my first choice to have my children in my arms while rehearsing, but things happen.
     
    Reginald Unterseher

  13. If your group is comfortable with it………….continue.  It would at first be a distraction, which could be delt with to some degree by telling your audience first.  As an audience member I would be at first distracted but if the music was sung well and the baby did not cry or fuss…..the music would be the focus.  You could tell members of the audience if they thought it would take away from your singing, “Close your eyes and let the music ‘sing’ for itself”

  14. If I had been in that audience, I would have found the baby’s presence on stage distracting at best, and extremely unpleasant at worst if the baby had started to fuss or cry during the performance.  Even normally calm and quiet babies can let out ear-splitting shrieks on occasion for any number of reasons, and that particular sound would be excruciating to my ears, especially if there were microphones near the source.
     
    Babies and small children at rehearsals?  As a former choir member (in Utah, perpetually awash with multitudes of progeny) I would say that would be fine, but only as long as everyone in the choir agreed to it (this is tricky, as nobody wants to be accused of being politically/socially incorrect or “non-inclusive” — so an anonymous poll should always be taken).  But on stage during concerts?  No.  No no no no no.  What is good (or “right”) for a choir, or an individual choir member, is not always what is good/right for a diverse audience.
     
    If a choir member who is also a parent of young children has difficulty finding or paying for childcare, then yes, other choir members should be encouraged to step up and help by providing contact information and/or money to help pay for the care.  If there is no solution to a childcare problem, and it is decided that babies and young children are not welcome at rehearsals, then the parent simply cannot participate in the choir.  Life isn’t fair. 
     
    If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way, it’s that parents (and we mothers, especially) can’t “have it all,” or “do it all,” and we shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to make everything possible and pleasant for us, especially if doing so diminishes and detracts from others’ enjoyment of any activity, such as singing in a choir or attending a concert.
     

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