Yesterday was Kathy’s choir concert at Schulte Elementary School, and once again it was a smashing success – despite the fact that Kathy’s group is a bit smaller than it typically is. (The choir consists of fourth and fifth graders and they have to request to be part of it; it’s basically an extracurricular activity that happens during the school day.) But from what I could tell, she still had the cream of the crop and they delivered a really fine performance and seemed to have a ball doing it. What was especially striking to me is how well these particular children watched Kathy as she conducted them; I didn’t notice nearly as many singers who’s minds were off in La La Land, or looking at everybody in the room except my wife. And that may not seem like a gigantically big deal, but there are a lot of benefits in the real world to learning that elusive skill of focus and it’s striking to me how choir for young kids can be a training ground for that. But more important than their focus and discipline was just the joy and enthusiasm with which they sang.
I sometimes wonder what the biggest difference is between what Kathy does with elementary kids – Polly with high school – and me with college students and adults. In some ways it feels like the same arena but three different sports – or maybe it’s the difference between tennis, racketball and squash. Or maybe it isn’t all that different. So much of this business is in getting people to be more comfortable with their singing – to let go and have fun and feel the incomparable pleasure of sharing your voice with the world, whether you’re Beverly Sills, Bozo the Clown, or someone in between. At the evening concert, during the sing along portion, Kathy came up with the wonderful idea of splitting the verses of The Twelve Days of Christmas between the audience (the adults) and the students on the risers. . . with the former taking the odd verses and the students taking the even, with my wife in between and conducting them all like one of those people on an airport runway guiding the planes in. It was a brilliant notion because you would be surprised (perhaps) at how abysmally the parents and grandparents tend to sing in the sing along- but in this scenario, they had to really step up to the plate and did!
My wife had a second brilliant idea which played out at the afternoon concert. Her dad wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to get to the afternoon concert on time because of a gig he had with his barbershop quartet – which inspired her to invite him and his three buddies to stop by the concert whenever they could get there and sing a couple of numbers for the kids. (The afternoon concert is for the Schulte student body- the evening concert is for the public.) They gladly agreed and the audience was spell bound, as though Spongebob Squarepants himself had come by. And as fun as it was, it was also sort of poignant to watch Kathy’s dad up there – 76 years old and going strong, and still as much in love with singing as he ever was – in front of kids as young as kindergarten. . . a guy born during the time of Herbert Hoover singing for kids who will watch Barack Obama become president. . . and somehow they were all on the same page – the music page.
A moment of comedy – as the afternoon concert ended and the kids were filing out, I quietly said to Kathy that I liked the John Jacobson songs they had just sung – they were quite clever – but that the script left a lot to be desired. Kathy looked at me with a truly wounded expression on her face and said “I wrote the script.” I felt so awful, like I’d just been caught in a mousetrap with no way out – and had hardly begun to sputter out a heartfelt apology when she said “Gotcha!” I knew I was married to an evil woman, but I didn’t realize how evil until that moment.
Evil or not, she’s still one heck of a music teacher.
pictured above: some of the youngest audience members watching the barbershop quartet perform. Schulte is a place that strongly stresses good audience behavior, and it really shows at events like this. Those kids sit so quietly and attentively . . . because they know if they don’t, they’ll end up on that scary-looking island in Pinocchio.