I miss high school choir--Journal entry

I can hardly believe it's been 7 1/2 YEARS since I sang in my high school choir.

This is a video of the choir at my old high school in Texas 2010.



When I was in choir, I used to be one of those girls in the background doing a silly dance and singing backup. I always thought it would be cool to be one of the soloists that sing with power and confidence, but those are hard things for me to find in myself. I sang my "Senor Solo" at our last high school choir show ever, and that took every ounce of courage I could muster. I was the Blue Fairy from Pinoccio singing, "When you wish upon a Star." I wore my blue prom dress that happened to look like the fairy's dress in the movie.

For me, choir really started when I joined the Musical Theater and Dance class with Ms. Gillis in Junior High. It was so fun to sing AND dance. I also enjoyed the new experience of singing in small groups and ensembles. We had an awesome group and an awesome teacher. She took us to State--the only freshman choir to make it. Then I went to high school in Bremerton and the choir kind of fell apart. We started with 27 girls in the "Elite Audition-Only" girls choir. By the end of the year we only had 9 girls left because all the others dropped out of choir. On the CD of our competition at the end of the year you can hear me clearly because I'm one of 3 altos, and the other two were really shy.

I moved to Texas when I was 16. I also moved from a mediocre girls choir of 9 to an amazing girls choir of about 50. Our teacher was very strict, but I loved having her nit-pick at us until we sounded perfect. Every note, vowel, dynamic, etc...had to be PERFECT, and we were capable of doing that when she pushed us.

(This is one of the songs my new choir in Texas sang--so cool. This version was the closest I could find to the way we sang it. Nobody had cell phones to take video back then.)



I loved learning how to sight read music and use solfege to figure out the notes without a piano. ("Solfege" = Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do) We went to choral competitions with music memorized, but we also competed by looking at new music we've never seen/heard and singing the whole song a capella. Amazing! I didn't know that was possible! I learned so much from being a part of the choir in Texas.

I really wanted to be a part of the Show Choir too, but I didn't have room in my schedule for a 2nd choir class. (Instead I was focusing on Health Science classes.)

Here is the Show Choir from my school in 2010.



These days, now that I'm old and not in high school anymore I am part of a very "mature" community choir. (Median age: 65 yrs?) We wear fancy dresses and stand nicely on the risers to sing 20-30 minute songs in latin. We also mix in "normal length" songs that are really beautiful too. My favorite from the last concert is Lux Aurumque--the one I posted on the blog a few posts ago.

(I couldn't find any youtube videos, so here's a picture of us last year in St. Boniface Church. We always sing there at Christmas. It has cool echo-y acoustics.)



I enjoy this choir too, and I'm definitely learning and improving my music skills....I just miss swing dancing on stage while I sing, or wearing fun costumes sometimes. Our last choir concert was about a week ago and we got to "dance" a little. We were singing, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..." and at the exciting part we got to step in place to the left and the right on the risers. After the concert we were congratulated by our conductor for doing so well on the dancing part. haha