Before I tell you about these amazing letters from members of the 9th Grade Choir of Bountiful Junior High School in Bountiful, Utah – and what it meant to me to read them for the first time this past Friday evening – I first have to tell you what kind of a day it had been. Even for Greg Berg, it was an absolutely crazy day.
It began with a 20-minute phone interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of our country’s finest historians and writers (famous for “Team of Rivals,” which was the basis of the recent film “Lincoln”), talking about her latest book, “The Bully Pulpit,” about Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. This 850-page book arrived in the mail the day before (arrrgh!!!) and most of Thursday evening was taken up with church choir rehearsal, so I got up as early as I could Friday morning to try and make sense of this huge book and its fascinating story. At 7:50, the phone rang – and it was Doris Kearns Goodwin, right on time! But as we began the actual interview, I realized that the sound quality was not good … and getting worse with every second. When she finished her first answer, I said that we should maybe hang up and make a new phone connection, but before we could even do that, the connection went dead. And suddenly I had visions of this highly anticipated interview evaporating into thin air- and I regretted having excitedly mentioned it to way too many people. (I saw this joining an infamous list of interviews that were scheduled but which never happened because the person never called – or ended up being unavailable: singer Amy Grant, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, and figure skaters Paul Wylie and Kristi Yamaguchi top the list.) But several minutes later, she called back – this time on a different line – and the quality was perfect! The interruption meant that our 19-minute interview was more like a 15-minute interview, but I was still incredibly grateful. But I felt like I had sweated off 20 pounds just in those few minutes, thanks to the stress.
From there, I was off to the University of Wisconsin Parkside for my opera class for Adventures in Lifelong Learning …. this time to talk about Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s Falstaff. The first opera I could pretty much talk about off the top of my head, but not Falstaff – and being properly prepared for that was an exercise in frantic cramming. And after that was the scary prospect of being observed by the chair of the Fine Arts division while teaching a voice lesson. (I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve ever been officially observed teaching a lesson.) I was grateful to Herschel Kruger for trying to set me at ease- and grateful as well that the lesson he happened to choose to observe just happened to be with a student with whom I have an exceptionally close and easy rapport, Nick Huff. I survived that, and then had to run from there to the 2-hour dress rehearsal for “Mozart is Dead” (which Herschel observed as well) – and then ran from there to Chamber Singers rehearsal, which included solo auditions for one of the pieces we’re singing for the Christmas Festival. By the time Carthage Choir rehearsal began, I was completely wiped out.
Which is why it was such a blessing to stumble into the house Friday evening and find a manila envelope from a former voice student of mine, Kasey Costabile Bradbury, who is now a choir director for Bountiful Junior High School in Bountiful, Utah. Kasey had asked for permission for her concert choir to sing my arrangement of the familiar Amazing Grace, which is not published. (It’s one of the first three pieces I sent to Hal Leonard, but they passed on it.) I was happy to give her permission, and even happier to hear that her kids really enjoyed singing it and did a great job with it. But that did not prepare me for the sight of this envelop filled with 66 thank you notes from her students (and several of them were more like letters than notes!) plus a lovely letter from Kasey herself.
These letters are absolutely incredible! They all say the same thing, in effect – “we liked your arrangement of Amazing Grace” (one student referred to my “assortment” of Amazing Grace) and “thanks for letting us sing it.” But it turns out that there are at least 66 different ways to say this, and they’re all here! Some of the letters are perfectly polished and others not quite so much – although I have to say that some of my favorite moments are found in the little spelling errors . . . as in one letter that begins with the words “we are so greatful” or another that said “your arrangement helped me see what the song really ment” . . . or another that talked about how singing the piece “is going to stregenthen and stretch our choir” . . . or a couple of other letters that are addressed to Mr. Burg. Those little errors helped me realize that Kasey had not dictated them or edited them in any way, and that makes them seem even more real and sincere. True, they were asked to do this; it’s not like all 66 young people spontaneously decided to thank me. But I think by and large they meant what they said, and several of them went out of their way to drive that point home. One letter ended this way: “when I say thank you, Mr. Berg, I truly mean thank you!”
If there is a theme that recurs beyond basic gratitude, it’s the fact that this song was for many of these students the most difficult song that they had ever sung: “The complexity of the music stretched me in a way I could not have done with any other piece of music ….” “It was a real challenge to learn and probably the toughest piece of music I’ve ever learned…” “Amazing Grace really pushed me to my limits, and it felt good to be stretched like that and I felt like I learned a lot about the art of singing from this song….” “This was one of the most complicated songs I have ever learned. It had so many different harmonies that I spent an hour every day after school picking out and practicing my part.” Who, me? It was so strange to read this again and again, because when the Chamber Singers do one of my pieces for the Carthage Christmas Festival, it’s very likely the easiest song that’s sung all night …. and probably the easiest song those students will sing in their entire time at Carthage. That’s just how I write. So it’s kind of cool to think about something I’ve written being a stiff challenge for someone . . . even if they’re ninth graders.
And tied up in its difficulty was the notion that their choir had actually found a new kind of unity just in the act of working so hard on it. “We really had to work together to sing this song right,” said one student. “Thank you so much for helping us to be a better choir through your touching music.” And from another student: “When we sang this song, we were superb! We were unified.”
There were some rather lavish compliments and some very personal expressions of gratitude that I don’t feel comfortable sharing, including many that talked about how the arrangement helped them think more about God’s grace in their lives. And one student talked about how his/her grandpa used to play the song on his accordion. “Two months ago he passed away. Singing this song brought me closer to him. Thank you!”
And on a lighter note was this comment: “I think it’s wonderful that Utah finally gets to hear your work!” 🙂
So what’s all this really about? At the risk of engaging in False Modesty, this isn’t about me or about my “Amazing Grace” arrangement or my generosity or my talent. This is about these young people and their gratitude, their insight, and their open-heartedness. It is about young people being open and unguarded …. allowing themselves to be deeply touched by a piece of music. It’s about their surprising perceptiveness and attention to detail. It’s about their excitement at having confronted a steep challenge and surmounting it. It’s about them coming to a fresh appreciation of a song that many of them had probably heard a thousand times before- or maybe thought of as a song more for their grandparents than for themselves. It’s about how a heartfelt ‘thank you‘ can itself be a wonderful gift for someone else. And it’s about their amazing teacher Kasey, who loves them, appreciates them, and has touched them in ways that they can’t begin to fully grasp or comprehend – although judging from these letters, a lot of these kids probably do appreciate her for the gift that she is to them. All I know is that Kasey and her students certainly live up to the beautiful name of their community . . . Bountiful. It’s a place I hope I can visit someday, so I can thank these young people in person for the beautiful thank you’s they first shared with me – thank you’s which I will always cherish.