By Sarah White

A friend and I have been talking about our mutual interest in getting singing back into our lives. She’s tried one local community choir and heard about another just launching into its summer cycle. It would meet for three rehearsals, then a performance. It met at the Garver Feed Mill, a renovated historic building a short walk from my house.

I have history with the mill, having been part of the citizen group that agitated for its restoration over a decade ago. The opportunity to be part of making music in that vast honey-colored brick hall, that was a graffiti-splotched cavern when I first saw it on a hard-hat tour, cinched the deal. I had the next four Wednesday evenings free. I would celebrate the old feed mill in song.

Cheers! Madison is the project of a doctoral music student, Liz, our choir director. I describe it as a drinking club with a singing problem, since she opened every rehearsal with an encouragement to have a beverage from the bar in hand and lift it whenever she randomly cried “Cheers!”

Too rusty at sight-reading to trust myself on alcohol, I brought a water bottle instead. Arriving for the first rehearsal, I was amazed to discover that 160 people had signed up for this! We were directed to our rehearsal room and the quadrant for our voices—Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass. I sat with the altos and quickly discovered my vocal range has collapsed by an octave since I sang in the high school choir.

We sight-read our way through seemingly random sections of the six songs we would perform. This was the pattern for each of the three rehearsals. Week by week, we built toward singing all the way through each piece.

It took me about two minutes to figure out that if I didn’t work on the songs outside of rehearsal, I didn’t stand a chance. Turns out choir is like signing up for dog obedience training—the work doesn’t happen in the class, the class just teaches you the work you need to do on your own.

I decided to take “Cheers!” seriously; I searched YouTube and found vocal warm-up videos, plus recordings of choirs performing the four songs I didn’t know—one African anthem, two gospel songs, and a Christian hymn. I did a lot of singing in the car on my short drives to the gym.

The day of the performance quickly arrived. “Are you nervous?” spouse and friends asked. “No, why would I be? This is pretty low stakes,” I replied. My voice among 160 would never be heard. There’s safety, as well as fun, in a crowd.

But that question sent me spiraling back to my high school choir days and the time Jesus saved me from performance anxiety.

The Jesus movement came to Carmel, Indiana in the spring of 1972. I was a sophomore. I followed a friend to a youth revival meeting at the Methodist church (just like I followed a friend to Cheers! Madison). At altar call, I came down. Parishioners circled me and held me on the ground as they prayed for the Spirit to enter me.

“Feel Jesus enter your heart!” There was moaning and chanting and singing all around. Other teens were in similar positions on the ground. One by one the Spirit came and they got up, reborn in the name of Jesus. Only my call wasn’t coming. It was like waiting for an orgasm that just isn’t coming. (Not yet familiar with orgasms, I wouldn’t have made that comparison then.)

I finally faked it just to get on with it. That led to personal confusion; I began reading the Bible, a small bit every night before bed, and praying for some sign of salvation.

Meanwhile, I was singing in the high school’s show choir. We did songs like “Tea for Two”. We had matching dresses of navy-blue polka dot voile, high-waisted, cinched under the bust, supposedly flattering to all figures.  We were given patterns and fabric and sent home to sew. I hated how I looked in mine—egg-shaped.

I was very shy. I found performing, even in the navy-blue polka dot anonymity of a thirty-person choir, very unsettling. I never even had a solo—just standing up in group was too hard for me.

That spring, our choir was booked to sing at the Masonic Temple for the Ladies of the Eastern Star, and I was nervous. That evening, I prayed to Jesus for salvation, again. And something finally happened. My nervousness was replaced by a great sensation of peace. This must be “the peace of the Lord that passeth all understanding”! If so, then I must have finally felt Jesus enter my heart!

I felt a lot better about the show choir after that moment. That feeling of extreme calm was accessible to me for several months before it faded.

Now, at the performance in the Garver Feed Mill’s atrium, surrounded by my 160 singing peers, I felt nothing but joy—a light heart engaged in play. There was nothing at stake whatsoever. The thing I’d hoped to achieve by getting singing back into my life had already happened.

At the last rehearsal before our performance, after our usual vocal warm-ups, Liz the choir director threw in a new one. “Play a chord—C Major,” she told our accompanist. “Okay, everybody sing your note—a nice open ‘Oooh’. When I signal you, move down one whole step.” We did—and the atrium filled with a joyful sound.

“Sopranos: Down one!” The harmony grew a bit discordant. “Altos, down one!” The discord grew more dramatic as voices matched and melded, two harmonies competing. “Tenors, down!” The tension became a question groping for an answer. “Basses, down!” The question found its answer and beauty filled the room again. We held that note, following her gesturing arms, many voices but one instrument. Our sound sustained and swelled until she released it. Our “oooh” soared into the vast atrium like a holy dove.

©  2024 Sarah White