This past Sunday night I conducted my 10th consecutive Messiah Singalong at Kenosha’s First United Methodist Church. Of course, I have no business referring to “my” tenth Messiah, because there could/would not have been any performance at all without all kinds of amazing people who made it possible, including ….
AN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHESTRA. I’m a good musician and I know Messiah through and through, but I am pretty much a complete amateur when it comes to orchestral conducting. I have said this over and over, but I want to keep saying it: the outstanding musicians who are gathered together for this event are not only incredibly skilled – but also incredibly kind and patient with me. Their graciousness is what allows me to even attempt this. By the way, this year’s group was especially impressive; I counted at least three different concertmasters/mistresses in the first violin section – at least two former high school orchestra conductors – a former high school band director – a former college band conductor – a present day college orchestra conductor …. Now do you understand why it’s such a terribly intimidating prospect for me to be standing on a podium, conducting a group of such sterling musicians?!? I would feel like an incompetent idiot were it not for their generosity. There would be no Sing Along Messiah without them. By the way, this is as good a time as any to mention . . .
JESSICA LOOMIS DeBOER. She is the whiz who takes care of the veritable blizzard of details that crop up with an event of this magnitude – and does so skillfully and cheerfully. And of all that she does for the Singalong Messiah, I most appreciate the wonderful job she does in assembling each year’s orchestra. (She also plays viola with them.) If there is a Messiah MVP, it is she!
A MARVELOUS ARRAY OF SOLOISTS. It’s inconceivable to even think about doing Messiah unless you have great soloists who can delivery the goods. For the past ten years, we have been blessed to have outstanding soloists who have served up all kinds of excitement and beauty. For this special 10th anniversary, I was given permission to expand the scope of how much music was performed and how many soloists were deployed- and I could not be more delighted with the results. Our alto, Libbi Bringer Weisinger, is the only soloist to be part of all ten of these Singalong performances, and once again she sang beautifully. She is a member of First United Methodist Church, the host of these performances; her participation is especially meaningful because of that. Soprano Sarah Gorke has been part of every Singalong except the very first one as well as last year’s, when bad weather left her stranded up north in Marshfield. To the rescue came a fine soprano named Jennifer Hansen, who as a UW-Parkside voice student had come to several of our performances as an enthusiastic singer in the audience-chorus. She was more than willing to step in on short notice and sang splendidly – and I was anxious to invite her back this year as a gesture of sincere appreciation. It was also great to have Sarah Gorke back – but she was singing while contending with the stress and sorrow of a very serious medical crisis for someone in her immediate family. I would certainly have understood if she had chosen to remain with her family, but she wanted to be with us … and she delivered a performance both beautiful and courageous. And in a night full of high points, one of my very favorites was when Sarah and Jennifer alternated in the Four Recitatives. It was all I envisioned and more. Also back was bass-baritone Elliot Nott, who had been part of all but one of our Singalongs – who has direct family ties to the congregation. I was especially excited by his performance of “The Trumpet Shall Sound,” which for the first time in our Singalongs included the seldom-heard B section and the recapitulation, complete with ornaments. What fireworks!
Finally, we welcomed two of my senior voice students at Carthage – tenor Nick Huff and baritone Mike Anderle – and they sang as if they had been doing this all their lives! This isn’t the first time Carthage students have been soloists in the Singalong. Sarah first soloed with us while still a student at Carthage (where she now teaches voice) – and other student soloists have included soprano Megan Lyne, tenors Trevor Parker and Andrew Johnson, and bass-baritone Aaron Steckman. It was great to add Nick and Mike to that proud legacy. Nick actually performed Comfort ye/ Every Valley with the Waukegan Symphony the weekend before, but for ours he was also charged with singing “But thou didst not leave” and “Thou shalt break them” and did a marvelous job. I couldn’t have been prouder. Mike had the misfortune of doing “my” aria- that is, the aria which I did back at Luther when I was his age and many, many times since. I am incredibly fussy about how “Thus saith the Lord/ But who may abide/ For He is like a Refiner’s Fire” is sung and after a few coaching sessions on it I’m sure he was tempted to scream. But he persevered and delivered a performance which impressed and pleased me very much.
A LARGE AND SPIRITED AUDIENCE/CHORUS. This is the third and final element – and in some ways it’s the most critical for having a successful and exciting Singalong Messiah. According to Jessica, 378 people attended this year’s performance – the biggest audience/chorus we’ve ever had – and most of those people raised their voices enthusiastically. Sure, the lighting in the sanctuary was a little bit dim – and the chorus are a little too spread out (with too many non-singers sitting amidst them) – but still … it was exciting! And I must say that I was especially delighted that there were so many men singing this year. There have been a couple of years when the Sopranos and Altos outnumbered the Tenors and Basses 4 to 1 (or it seemed like it) – but we were much more evenly distributed this year, with the basses nearly tied with the altos for numerical supremacy. But it’s not about numbers as much as it is about heart. What was so thrilling to me was to sense waves of passion and energy in that sanctuary. It is not every day that people get the chance to sing magnificent music to the accompaniment of a fine orchestra, and I think people found themselves swept up in the joy of that.
MY LIFE FLASHING BEFORE MY EYES. One more thing I need to mention: I hate to admit how close I came to whipping out my iPhone and snapping a photograph of the audience while I was standing on the podium. I know that would have looked supremely tacky, but I really wanted to preserve that amazing sight. And it’s not just that it was such a large group- but also that there were people from so many facets and phases of my life…. family, friends, colleagues…. and especially voice students of mine, both past and present. I was especially delighted at one point when I caught a glimpse of Matt Burton, who is a freshman at Carthage right now – and several rows behind him was Derek Galvicius, who was a freshman at Carthage back in the fall of 1996. Those two young men represent an 18-year span of my teaching career at Carthage – Matt just at the outset of his studies, excited at the prospect of being a teacher someday …. and Derek a highly regarded high school choir director in McHenry, Illinois with more than a decade of successful teaching already under his belt. (It seems like yesterday when Derek, right after new student convocation on his very first day on campus rushed up to me to say that he wanted to make sure that I was going to be his voice teacher! In 23 years at Carthage, that’s one of my all time sweet memories.) Anyway, I was so glad to look out over that audience and see Derek and Matt and Jason and Daryle and Colin and Mike and Max and David – and I can only hope that there will be many more Messiahs in their respective futures. I wish that for everybody who was in that room, because there is nothing to equal the thrill of encountering and embracing a masterpiece like Messiah.
pictured above: The Singalong Messiah from nine years ago. I’m afraid my conducting technique has not improved much since then, but my enthusiasm remains unbridled!