Choral Music Magazine
JUNE/JULY ISSUE
When you first join a choir as a youngster, all you can think of is getting to be one of the best. First, you go to their concerts and hear the Concert Choir singing – their sound beautiful and flawless to your musically untrained ears. You go through the beginning steps of learning notes and start the long process of mastering your vocals. You get taught general musicianship through the use of instruments and simple songs. You slowly climb up the ladder and become a better and better singer. You gradually learn more about notes and musical terms, all contributing to the main purpose of improving your skills. Finally, after much training, hundreds of concerts, and a few years of an exhausting amount of practice, you get promoted to the highest level.
The next rehearsal — your first with the highest group — you walk in and you are amidst many older choristers, all able to sing much better than you. Suddenly, you are overwhelmed with a sense of being the outcast - the only one who can’t sing well. Over time, you become just as good a singer as those you once looked up to. You see more new kids promoted and watch them initially experience the same feeling of being left out. After a few more years of singing, you are finally ready to move on.
You leave without a hesitation, anticipating relief and relaxation. For a week after leaving, you are just amazed with all the time you have – no more long practices, no more working at notes and shaping, posture and presentation. Friends call you, and instead of spending all the time looking at the calendar, you are able to simply say yes. Two weeks after parting from the choir, you’re finally able to ignore what it was like always running off to some rehearsal or concert, and just enjoy the high life.
After that second week, though, is when the pains of uncertainty begin to grip you, leaving you with many questions that nag you for quite some time. You start wondering what to do with all your free time. You tolerate the boredom of church just so you can go and sing through the hymnal. It is around this time that you recall the astronomical amount of good times had in the choir. You remember learning things like how to Hacky-Sack and then putting your own twists into the game. You remember all the people, some you have completely lost touch with, whom you used to see every week. You remember going to different, extravagant countries on tour.
I started out singing in the Pacific Boychoir Academy around the 4th grade and, after a few years, toured domestically and in France, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. One of my best memories was winning a Grammy in 2004 for singing Mahler’s 3rd with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. However, in 2006, I became a freshman in high school and felt it was time to relieve myself of the commitment to the choir.
For years these memories and questions continue to hassle you and keep bringing you back to a central question: what would it have been like if I stayed in the choir? Better still, what would happen if I joined again?
Adam Kreutzer is a former choirboy of the Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland, CA. With them he has recorded three albums, and performed numerous concerts across the globe. He now attends Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, CA.
Photo Credit: pacificboychoiracademy.org
