Our Church Choir :: Personal Narrative Essays

Our Church Choir Last year our church choir was preparing for its twenty-seventh spring concert, and I was in charge. No, I was not president of the church choir, I was the "musician's representative!" I had not an inkling what that meant, but, sure enough, my ignorance would not linger. I was to be in charge of organizing all things musical, from equipment to musicians. The musicians seemed almost ready. The choir still had three songs to learn, but with rehearsals every night and impromptu performances in the dining halls, on the shuttle buses I felt generally confident. As a rule, when you are putting on a performance and feel "generally confident" one week before show time, begin panicking. The first disaster struck close to home: our drummer's grandmother passed away. Apart from the tremendous blow this tragedy dealt both him and the choir, we needed to find another drummer. Then, like an ominous slinky, the rest of my carefully laid plans fell one on top of the other. Our directors took ill. The music was taking too long to teach. Our pianist, gone. Our strongest soprano's voice, history. And I broke a bass string. I could do nothing but laugh . . . and cry. I managed to do that quite a bit. But just when Murphy's Law seemed martially imposed, things got miraculous. The night before the concert, an old church choir drummer stopped by to learn all two hours of the music. The choir learned the rest of the music that same evening and, when we finished, the room glowed with harmony. We were rough, but overall, the evening returned my general sense of confidence. (See above rule.) When I arrived the next evening, a troubling sight greeted me: a cart with none of the sound equipment I had ordered. We had no microphones. We had no speakers. I had already lost my wits by this point, and now I was inches from losing hope. A group assembled to see what could be salvaged from the situation and was mildly successful. But with all these distractions, the choir could not possibly be . . . Brilliant! The choir was brilliant. I have never been part of such a beautiful musical experience. But what is the point of this story? This story explains how our church choir operates: by grace of God and family.