New Chorus In Town

I love to sing. I mean, LOVE to sing. I'd do it all day if I could.

I've been singing since I was old enough to make sounds. I used to hum the Lassie theme song (on pitch) before I could talk. Even as a very small child, I gravitated toward music with rich harmony. I knew there were different notes being played and/or sung, and it fascinated me. When I was in second grade, my sister learned the harmony for a Primary song she was singing in the Salt Lake Tabernacle for a Conference broadcast. She taught it to me. I WAS HOOKED!!!!!!!!!! Now I understood that harmony had a structure, and I was trying to pick out or invent harmony for everything I heard.

Was I born to be an alto? No, I'm a first soprano. But I absolutely love being part of groups that use wonderful harmony, and I like to sing harmony whenever possible. In the car to CDs, in congregational hymns, to t.v. themes, anywhere music is found I will sing harmony. I love singing second soprano, alto, tenor an octave higher than written, and even baritone up an octave or two. I strongly prefer singing in a group surrounded by a chord of voices, over singing a solo anytime.

With that in mind, here's a sad fact: I haven't been able to sing in a professional or semi-professional group for seven very long years. It's been a painful time of artistic stagnation. Can you hear the wailing violins in the background? Seriously, think Schindler's List soundtrack. Not to mention, I can't sing nearly as well as I used to after seven years of non-singing and frequent laryngitus.

I attended a Messiah sing-along last year with a friend from church and told her how much I needed to be doing things like this again. She's a very social person who knows everyone. She started asking around and found that the new music director at the Methodist Church who had conducted the Messiah thing wanted to start a chorus in our area. HOORAY!!!!!!!!!

We were invited to a brainstorming session last week to discuss how to go about getting it off the ground. Two of the music professors from the local University were there (all will remain anonymous for personal security reasons), the guy who will be directing the chorus, a choir director from the public school system, a new Columbus resident who has experience in community choruses, and my friend and I.

We tossed ideas around for several hours about auditions, expectations, advertising, sponsers, etc. We'll be having auditions two nights in August. The group will be called CCS. That's right, I'm not telling you the group's name on this blog with no visitors. The new resident will be the PR person. I will most likely be the audition coordinator and was asked to come up with an audition form. My friend volunteered to call the people who are rejected and nicely tell them, "...not this year".

I've already finished two drafts of the audition information form. I can't wait to sing again!

Now if I could just get over this cold and get my voice back again....