A good start

First Rehearsal Day.

Every year, I am anxious about this, more than any other event of the season. Stage fright? I know what that feels like, and this is not quite the same, for it is not a concern about how I will do. It is how others will do.

The youth choir is the one that scares me the most. Today, we had four new singers, all girls: two second-graders, one slightly older girl whose family has moved to town, one fifth-grader who came at her friend's invitation. Will they have a good experience in this first rehearsal? Will they come back next week?

The RSCM training scheme is called "Voice for Life," and it starts here, this first day of rehearsal. If it goes well, these girls may be Singers all the days of their life. If it goes badly, they may never sing in another choir, and they would miss out on something of great importance.

So, I worry. I lose sleep. I fidgit all day, unable to do anything productive. And the hour finally arrives.

It is a good rehearsal. The new girls are paired up with experienced singers (some of them just a year older, in their second year of choir), each pair sharing one set of music scores so the new singers can begin to learn about following notes, finding their place. It is as good for the "experienced" half of the pairs as it is for the new singers, for now they have to teach someone else how to do these things.

I am grateful to our experienced singers for making this such a good choir, a place that is comfortable and safe and fun, and where we all grow in grace.

The adult choir worried me because we are slim in numbers. Two singers retired in the spring, another finished his degree and moved to the West Coast. But a new soprano appeared, at the invitation of J., with whom she works. She seemed to have a good time, and I think that she will return.

We opened with a setting of "When I survey the wondrous cross" by Gilbert Martin, and the choir's sound was terrific: strong, rich, confident. We began a new setting of the Preces and Responses (Heathcote Statham), and it is going to go very well.

It was a good beginning.

There is much to do, a whole year's work ahead. But now we have begun, and it will be easier.