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Choral Ethics

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Another Thing Postponed and Canceled

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“Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.” Tertullian

This week is normally remarkably busy for me, the week before my chamber choir’s annual summer retreat. I gather music, stuff folders and prepare handouts. I roundup schedules, language sheets and anything else I think is needed for the coming concert and rehearsal cycle. Getting materials together and consulting with my accompanist, along with a cold beverage, about what we will sight read through and what we won’t sight read through takes up a couple of afternoons during a usually hot and humid week. It is predicted to be the usual “hot and humid” week after July 4th, but nothing else will be usual.

I am okay with what this week will be—no retreat and possibly no fall concert—but can’t help notice the dates. Watching the dates whiz by no longer makes me weep. But it does cause me to think about what I’m missing, what is canceled and postponed. Yes, I will miss our special time of exploring new-to-us music with my choir. And will miss the fellowship of sharing a lovely potluck meal afterwards, catching up with everyone’s family, and ideas for our ensemble’s future. We had planned a surprise birthday celebration for our oldest singer—Althea will be 85 later this month—and now will have to celebrate another way. But I am fine with all this right now because, really, what choice do we have?

Some of you are NOT okay with postponing and cancelling and rescheduling; about once a week I hear from someone who is FURIOUS with the situation we ALL find ourselves. I try to be calming and I try to be kind but am fast approaching snapping at folks. I am not sure what I am supposed to say any longer so perhaps it’s best to say nothing. I have always made it a point to respond to ALL Choral Ethics emails I receive but think I will no longer respond to anyone who rants about the unfairness of Pandemic postponements. My own mental health is worth something.

To those of you who are angry and bitter about the Pandemic and your state or county’s restrictions; I get it, I really do. We are the ones usually in control and it is TOUGH to NOT be in control. But what can we do about something that is TRULY beyond our control? Look at it this way; if you decide to have rehearsals or concerts the regular way, going against science and even local and state orders, how will you feel if one of your singers gets sick and dies? Or when audience members end up in the ICU? You would feel awful and that’s a fact.

Some of you have told me you believe nothing will happen if you go ahead with your usual plans. That would be the ideal situation. But it’s more certain nothing will happen if you DON’T go ahead with your usual plans. That’s the point; nothing will happen, no one will get sick and all will complain nothing happened. We won’t know if what we are doing is the right thing until long after we get the “all clear.” Hold tight, we’re getting there but we’re not there yet!

Beginning next week, I’ll be sharing books I’ve been reading, concerts and lectures I’ve been streaming and other professional development things I’ve been trying to do. I’d love to hear what you are doing too, so please share in the comments.

Until next week; we well and be safe!

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Feeling Like Myself

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“It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.” Albert Camus


 I don’t feel like myself and am sure you don’t either. Nothing is like it’s supposed to be. The rhythm of our days is different, what we wear is different and what we DO is different. We don’t see our friends or colleagues and we don’t see many of our family. We’ve not been able to go out to dinner for MONTHS or to see our hairstylist. Doing our weekly errands to the grocery store or hardware store takes planning and we need to wear a mask to do so. When we get to the store, we may not be able to purchase everything we need. Most of us hunkered down initially and tried not to whine or complain about any of this but we are wearing out. This different way of life is lasting a LOT longer than any of us ever thought.

I realized only a short time ago, that the reason I don’t feel like myself is because this is a NEW version of myself. But, unlike the previous newer versions, I had no choice in the matter. Becoming a college student or conductor or a girlfriend and later, a wife and mother, were all things I wanted and chose to become. Starting a new job at a new place, with new students and singers, was something I wanted when I applied for the job. Moving to a new house or founding my chamber choir were things I WANTED to do, and they felt part of me, though they were new endeavors.

The new normal is not helping me feel better about anything, and I certainly don’t feel like myself. In fact, most days I don’t want to get out of bed. The news, and the prospects in the near future for of our profession, is dragging me down. I never realized how much planning and programming, besides the actual singing and rehearsing, are a PART of me and that part of me isn’t being used.

A few weeks ago, I WAS feeling sorry for myself, really sorry. Then I had a bit of a wakeup call and realized my inconvenience is not the point. My spouse is a physician and while he is not usually taking care of COVID-19 patients, he does go into his hospital quite often. Around the time of my Pity Party, he saw a patient in the hospital and as he was leaving, a Celebration happened, with a sort of parade. Everyone stopped EVERYTHING and clapped while a patient was being wheeled out in a wheelchair. It was a COVID-19 patient who had been in the hospital for over 40 days and his hospital Celebrates Them Out when they are finally able to leave. She had a mask on and when she turned, looked at him and called out; she was one of his regular patients and recognized him. He was shocked to see her and has since seen her in his office; she doesn’t know where she could have picked up the virus.

My inconvenience and your inconvenience are not the point; people’s LIVES are the point. We can complain, be unhappy we can’t go about our business of making music and singing together, or we can try to make the best of it. No one wants this, but what choice do we have? We can all find ways to survive, to create our art and to remain fairly healthy, both physically and mentally. In order to help myself function; I am trying some things to get me feeling more like myself so I can function better in this Never-Never-Land.

ChoralNet has a new Blogger, Dr. Ramona M. Wis, who will be blogging about Yoga and think I will become a regular reader. I will also be giving myself a daily Ballet Barre and get back in touch with my former life as a dancer. I will consciously try to get my sleep/wake cycle close to what it has been for years. And I will be dressing more as I usually do instead of the jeans and tee-shirts that has become my Uniform. Today, I am supposed to have my first haircut in three months, and I can’t wait!

I hope you will also try things to help yourself feel better in this strange time. Until next week, be well and be safe!

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Another Batch of Pandemic Shaming

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“Doubt is the brother of shame.” Erik Erikson

Like many of you, I am in the midst of trying to choose repertoire for a concert that may—or may not—happen. Usually by now, I have chosen most of my fall music and am gathering scores and octavos together and any language resources or other material to help my choir. Our summer retreat is traditionally the weekend after July 4th, and I coordinate with our retreat hostess—one of my singers with a lovely home and garden—and the RSVPs are coming in by now.

I am still at the “looking at music” aspect of my concert program process but this has been a real struggle for me. I am just not able to get invested in music that will probably not be performed this year and that’s why it’s been so hard I think. Still, I am trying to put together a concert program of some sort, in the event we are able to do something. I would rather have a program already put together, as thoughtfully as possible, than something thrown together at the last minute. As well, I am trying to consciously choose more music by composers of color. It’s a trying time, that’s for sure!

I am not the only one struggling, it appears, trying to get ready for rehearsals and concerts in the event we are able to have a somewhat normal fall season. But some of you are unlucky enough to have friends, relatives and colleagues who think they know what you SHOULD be doing.  I knew it wouldn’t take long before another wave of Pandemic Shaming would start, and it has begun.

Many of you have asked if I think what you’re doing is right. You’ve begun to doubt yourselves, your motives and your agendas for trying to comply with your state’s mandates, our professional societies suggestions and research and your own basic common sense. Many states are rolling back restrictions but not, unfortunately, for singing, rehearsals and concerts. It’s tough to argue or explain (often over and over and OVER again) to friends and family why you can’t go back to normal when others can. You’re frustrated and tired and upset; for having to constantly repeat yourself and mourning for our very profession.

The doubt eats away at you; is there something you SHOULD be doing you’re not? Your singers want to get back to singing but don’t want to do it virtually; if that’s the case, don’t doubt yourself for NOT making arrangements. You’ve been having Zoom rehearsals for months and they have been okay but not great; don’t doubt yourself for trying. Read the research, listen to webinars, and make decisions for your choir and situation to the best of your ability. No one knows what they are doing; we are all playing this by ear. Anyone who tells you they DO KNOW what they are doing must be over 100 years old; only those who have been through a Pandemic could understand!

Folks who criticize others at this time are not your friends. THEY are the ones doubting themselves and need to make others feel bad so they can feel a little better. Don’t listen, and don’t doubt yourself. Do what you can to get to the other side and then, be at peace, knowing you did everything you could.

Until next week, be well and safe!

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Father’s Day Ruminations

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“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.” Robert Frost

As I write today’s blog, I am sipping a glass of iced tea, brewed with mint from my own garden. The mint was the first thing we planted when we bought our house 26 years ago, but we should have planted it in a pot in the ground. I learned my lesson because it has spread and spread and SPREAD. Every year, we pull the mint that invades our roses and phlox, remarking on the fresh, clean smell as we do. But I don’t mind because this mint has survived to grow another year, as it has every year, since it was in my Great-Grandfather’s garden in Kansas. It is a yearly reminder of my ancestors from that branch of the family.

Our mint has made a few stops between Kansas and the south suburbs of Chicago. My Mom gave me a few cuttings from her garden in Chicago when we bought our house, so our mint was in Chicago before coming home with me. And my Grandmother gave Mom and Dad a few plants from HER garden in Berwyn when they bought the house where we were brought up. My Grandfather had planted our mint in his Berwyn Victory Garden during the Second World War after a visit to HIS parent’s farm in Kansas. And I recently gave a cutting to one of my sons to grow in a pot on a windowsill in his Chicago apartment, so our mint is back in Chicago, the fifth generation to grow it. It’s funny to think; a cutting or two from an herb in a garden in the middle of the last century is thriving in a different place and time and yet, it is. I don’t know where the mint came from before its Kansas origins, probably from a friend’s cuttings or who knows where, but it has survived.

Have you ever thought about this; we are music and choral survivors from another place and time, a line continued down through us. All of those “teachers of our teachers,” continued through us. We bring our musical ancestors with us, whether we realize it or not, to everything we do. Our rehearsal techniques, even if we supposedly use “new” methods, reflect one or two or three of the choral directors we’ve worked with from elementary school through graduate school. Musical tastes and attitudes often reflect our musical ancestors; the willingness to try new things or to stick with what we know. A way we phrase a correction or try to get a certain vowel sound or dynamic is probably similar to the way we were taught and directed in those formative rehearsals in our past.

Even the way we DON’T do things reflects those teachers of ours. Many a ChoralNetter complaint has come to me about directors being mean and nasty when there was no need to be mean and nasty. Depending on the circumstance, I’ve suggested they just deal with the nonsense for now, then move on when it makes sense or to leave the organization and explain why. I’ve often told them to think about how they treat, or would like to treat, their own singers and students. I ask them to think about how they feel in a typical rehearse with that nasty director. We can look at what we didn’t like in our teachers and do the opposite; and it’s probably for the best. My own ballet teacher, Walter Camryn, used to say, “everyone’s good for something, if only to be a bad example.”

I ‘ve thought about some of my singing and choral ancestors, the teachers of my teachers. Several of my teachers were students of Madeline Marshall and two were students of Leo Sowerby (including my own mother). I’ve studied with students of Robert Shaw and Margaret Hillis. I know my rehearsal and performance techniques are a result of all those that came before me, a sort of mash-up of what they did and how they did it. What I do today is not exactly what they did, but an essence of what they did, brought into the 21st century. The same can probably be said of YOU!

This Sunday is Father’s Day and while we honor the fathers in our lives, it might be important to remember and honor teachers and mentors and those we consider our musical parents. We don’t have to do it Sunday but perhaps sometimes soon. During the Pandemic, reaching out to our teachers and mentors can help us all feel good and connected at this strange time.

Cheers! See you next week. Until then, be well and safe!

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/

Choral Potpourri/ Choral Ethics: Make Me An Instrument

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“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace….” St. Francis of Assisi

Like many of you, the last few weeks I’ve been scrambling to craft an appropriate statement for my chamber choir to make about the murder of George Floyd. I am heartsick, trying to make sense of the difficulty in our country and how it has manifested itself in my own community. It’s difficult because my chamber choir is based in a very diverse and integrated and WONDERFUL area in the southern suburbs of Chicago. I’ve always thought we were untouchable because we are diverse and welcoming and these things happen other places, not here. Well, I was wrong, it HAS happened in our own community and will continue to happen if we allow it to.

I work with an arts alliance in my area and between many emails and a Zoom meeting or two, we decided to make a difference in our own community, arts organization by arts organization. But I wondered, what can my group do—eight to 15 singers with two administrators/music leaders– a small arts organization by any one’s definition?

Of course, there is something we can do, even a small organization such as we. We can denounce what happened to George Floyd and all the George Floyds in our country because of systematic racism. And we can vow to include People of Color in all we do and certainly that became part of our statement.

My chamber choir sings music written for small groups; we are probably thought of as highfalutin in many circles.  And we’ve never tried to change the world and then I thought, maybe, just maybe, we can try to change the world, bit by bit, person by person, heart by heart.

As I began to think about how to form my many thoughts into some sort of cohesive statement, a prayer kept coming to me over and over again. It is perfect and expressed perfectly what I wish to say. You may know it or have sung the many choral settings of it, the Peace Prayer by St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

I thought being musicians, becoming an instrument of peace is the perfect and best way for us to change the world. Those small steps we take in our own community can begin our journey of peace-making. And so, I challenge you, fellow ChoralNetters, to become instruments of peace in your community by doing small things and kind things and RIGHT things every day. If we all decide to be instruments of peace, how much better the world would be!

Until next week; be well and safe.

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/?ref=bookmarks

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Finding Our Voice

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“We can hear the silent voice of the spiritual universe within our own hearts.” Ruth St. Denis

It’s been a tough week, in several months’ worth of tough weeks. I’m exhausted, heart-sick and worried, and not necessarily in that order. I feel helpless and hopeless and a bit frightened.

Today I had planned to write about finding our voice. And perhaps that’s what I’ll write about anyway; in fact, several ways of finding our voice.

After years and years of singing almost every day, I am not singing, and can feel it physically. I have had voice lessons, from a retired professor of voice once a week almost year-round for 15 years and haven’t had a lesson since March 9. I always sing examples for my choir, but we’ve had no rehearsals since March 10. I normally vocalize each morning in the shower, working through a tricky Mozart run or singing a passage from one of my choir’s pieces. But I haven’t done anything lately because my heart hasn’t wanted to sing. And my voice is rusty.

On Monday, I decided I better start singing again, if only in the shower. I started with hums, then moved on to oooos, then maybe I’ll work on a couple of the easier pieces I’ve sung in my voice teacher’s recitals before I get out the Mozart or Barber or Handel. Singing is a physical thing, much like anything physical, and it’s best to try to work up to where I was gradually before I tackle the tough stuff again.

Every week since the Fall of 2015, Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics has been my voice here on ChoralNet. I’ve tried to help with your sticky situations or explain how to handle a difficult issue in your rehearsal room. Or maybe I’ve taken your side OR told you to wake up, smell the coffee and change YOUR behavior. I’ve held up examples of friends and colleagues, both as what to do and what NOT to do in the pursuit of our Choral Art. I’ve shared things in my own life and spoken up about what I believe is important to be an ETHICAL choral professional. But I’ve haven’t talked about politics and that’s deliberate. I don’t feel comfortable, even now, to share anything of a more pointedly political nature. I believe politics shouldn’t distract from the making of music and that’s what I’ve mostly tried to do with Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics. But today I will speak about an important component of Choral Ethics and what I hope could be a help in these challenging times.

Today, I raise my voice to ask you to raise YOUR VOICE for right and truth in your own community. Do what is right–I know you know what that is–and support those around you who do what is right. Dialogue with those who are different from you and make an effort TO UNDERSTAND. Be honest and ask questions if you don’t understand and listen to the response with an open heart. Don’t judge others and their motives just as you hope others don’t judge YOU and YOUR motives. And, if you can be anything, BE KIND; kindness is never wrong.

Until next week; be well and be SAFE!

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning!

https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/?ref=bookmarks

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