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All Brassed OutNovember 29, 2005 Chorus rehearsal last night was at the Old Whaling Church, where we're scheduled to perform next Monday and Tuesday nights. For the first time we met the brass ensemble that will play on the Rutter Gloria and the Pinkham Christmas Cantata. (For the shorter pieces we're on our own.) The Whaling Church, built with whaling money just as the whaling industry was beginning its short steep slide into oblivion, is at once austere and elegant: high ceiling, chandeliers, tall windows along three sides, the balcony at the back dominated by the great pipe organ. Seating is in pews varnished to a fare-thee-well and hard enough to keep Edgartonians awake during town meetings. The stage at the front is long and not very deep: the 120-member chorus fills it four or five deep, standing on risers, and from the wings it's hard to see the conductor. (One of the conundrums of middle age: I need my reading glasses to read my music, but I need my far-seeing contacts to see the conductor.) Most chorus members are excited about singing with the brass ensemble, which was hired with the help of a no-strings-attached grant from an anonymous off-island benefactor. I've hovered somewhere between denial and "whatever." Last night I had a sustained out-of-chorus experience: could barely hear my own section, never mind the rest of the chorus; felt little connection with the music, even as I was realizing that I know it better than I thought it did. We didn't sing all that well, but who will know if we fluff it next week? Wrong notes, missed entrances, dynamics that don't vary from one phrase to the next -- all will be subsumed in the crescendo of brass. I'm feeling seriously grumpy about the whole thing. The chorus has slid a little further away from the community it's supposedly part of, or maybe the community has slid away from it. (I see water vanishing into the sand after a wave breaks on the beach.) I want to see and hear the people I make music with, and if we could get down off these risers that would be fine too.
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