Let's Wing It

Tonight, the robed choir performed with the UW-L concert choir for their final concert of the year. We were chosen because "we could represent the area with our choral sound," or something like that. With such a willing director, our choir is a community that tends to decide things unanimously. When we were informed of this prestigious honor, the choir was on board 100%. I, however, wasn't. I still can't exactly explain why. Perhaps it is because I'm sick of school and this is "just another thing" in the way of getting out. But I hardly think that is the case. 

Choir means a lot to me. The seniors in choir have had two different directors (in both band and choir) for two years each. Our previous director inspired me to love music. Choir took on a new appeal as a way to let out steam or describe the angst of the day through the songs that we sung. I loved it. And then we got a new director. We've had two, even better, years with him. And still, having never been invited to perform with a choir as talented and defined as the UW-L choir before, I still didn't want to do it. Reasons, still, unknown. 

Our director made the arrangements and the director of the UW-L choir, Dr. Walth, came in to work with us. This brought a newfound excitement to do it. We had this big-time director coming to work with US, a no-name choir that has never been seen as "worthy" in the music department (we have a shitty school with crappy facilities). I started to change my mind about it all. The song we were going to perform with the UW-L choir was a cheesy gospel-based hymn based on the New Testament. Dr. Walth arranged it. And after working on it repeatedly for about a week and a half, I started to wonder if this concert was really worth it for us to do. Again, for reasons unbeknownst to me. 

Gig day finally came. We worked on only two songs of the four that we performed tonight. This was rather different than for a normal concert, where we will rehearse each song to perfection multiple times in one day for a week before to make sure it is dead-on. This was, for lack of a better term, wung. But it went well. Overall, I had a great time performing in the recital hall of the CFA on campus. The vocal jazz performed there a month ago. It's a great room. And the UW-L choir is amazing. So it went very well. But I'll continue to wonder why I was so turned off at the start.