Choir People

Last night I looked at the basses, who sit directly across from the tenors, and I was reminded of four guys in The Music Man. They are the guys who insist to Pofesson Harold Hill that they cannot sing and then, after they are convinced that singing is nothing more than holding a note out, spend the entirity of the film walking around in a barber shop quartet.

It's not that the basses sing in four part harmony, they don't. But the three of them travel in a pack and are very similar - two of them being Scotch-Dutch halfbreed brothers and the other being English.

Charles, Thorsten and I are not as connected. We mill and chat with others during the breaks. Maybe it's not our connectedness as much as our social skills. We want to chat with others.

There are often as many altos as there are the entire rest of the choir put together. I don't know why there are so many. Sally Pepper remains my favorite. So good to talk to her, a woman who's made a very similar journey to mine. Then there's the woman who make SUCH faces while she sings. That very sincere, smoozy look like she means every word. There's also two altos who have been in the choir 50 years. Fifty years? My mother was in college fifty years ago!