How Can I Keep From Singing?!
One of my most favorite things about beautiful St. Thomas is our choirs. First of all, they are FREE, which is always a tremendous thing, and second of all, they are all awesome. We have four choirs: Women’s Choir (self explanatory), Liturgical Choir (sings at mass), Concert Choir (sings at concerts) and Chamber Singers (the top dogs). I am a proud third semester member of Liturgical Choir and what a semester it has been!
Each choir practices twice a week, almost always on Tuesdays and Thursdays either from 1:30-3:10 or 3:25-5:00. Liturgical Choir practices in the 1:30-3:00 slot and it has been a busy semester for us! We are different from the other choirs in the sense that we practice songs that we sing at mass every other weekend instead of focusing on big concert pieces. This semester, on the feast day of Christ the King, the last day in the Liturgical year and a pretty big deal in the Church, we sang a Haydn mass. Haydn is a very famous composer, like Mozart or Beethoven, and he wrote all these amazing mass parts in Latin. We spent the first two months of the semester learning the parts and then we got to sing them with a packed church on November 20! It was a magnificent time and made me all the more thankful to be in Liturgical Choir!
Now, two weeks after the Haydn mass, we are in the final stages of preparing for our Christmas concert, which is this Sunday! We are singing a song in Latin and English called “It Fell Upon the High Midnight” that changes to Latin every so often. We’re also singing a song called “A Simple Gloria.” This one is all in English, which is always nice. The composer of this song is actually going to be at the Christmas concert, so we’re working extra hard to get it down so she enjoys it. We’re also singing the Gloria, a 24-paged version, with all the other choirs. We had an extra rehearsal tonight from 5-6 and got to sing with the band for the first time, which was so awesome and sounded amazing!
My dad, sister Lauren, me and my mom at last year's Christmas concert!
Our awesome robes! The teal collars were fun. This year we aren't on tv so we are just wearing our gray albs, which are a little more constricting to your neck but still better than wearing a dress all day!
There are two showings of the Christmas concert: Sunday at 4:00 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m. The 4:00 p.m. one sold out the first week! The concert is at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis and my parents are coming, so I’m excited to see them again already! Sunday is an adventure for us choir kids because we get to spend the whole day in Minneapolis! We get to Orchestra Hall about 8:30 and warm up, practice a bit, then we get to go have lunch (last year it was snowing, so much fun!) and then we get to come back and sing! How can it get any better?
Finally, one of the more practical reasons why choir is the best is because you can satisfy your Fine Arts requirement for free! As long as you stay in choir for 4 consecutive semesters, you just have to write a paper at the end of it and the credits are yours! As for getting into an actual choir, you do have to audition as a freshman but it isn’t scary at all because all the music people are kind souls and not intimidating. Once you audition once, you never have to audition again unless you want to switch choirs or have a solo. It’s a pretty awesome deal. The moral of the story: if you have any singing ability at all, try out for choir.