Last night was the Pathways concert at my daughter's high school. This is the concert where they start with the elementary school choirs which feeds into the junior high choirs which feeds into the high school choir. It's designed to show parents and the community how the choir programs integrate and to generate interest in choir. It's really not bad since every choir just sings 3 or so songs. We were done listening to 5 choirs in just over an hour's time. By the end of it, my daughter was in tears of anger and frustration but more on that later.
My kid's elementary school started a new choir program in January of this year. They've never had a choir of any type before but now they have two choirs. The Junior Choir is for 1st-3rd graders and the Senior Choir is for 3rd-6th graders. They did a bang-up job and even did a semi-complicated round. When the teacher said at the end that they'd only been rehearsing one day a week since their creation in January, I was even more impressed. They even managed to do "It's a Small World" alternating in English and Spanish.
Next up was another local elementary school where they have a long history of having choir. The kids rehearse twice a week during lunch recess and last year, they blew me away with how good they were. They were still good this year but their music was too complicated for them to execute very well. I could get glimmers of their good sound but this was a clear case where the music did not fit the choir very well.
There are several other elementary schools in the feeding pattern, but these are the only two of the eight elementary schools who have choir programs. For the most part, both of these choirs feed into one of the two junior highs. The junior high where my daughter attended gets very few students from either school with choirs. Their junior high school performance was pretty good. It was nice to see so many returning faces and having 5 guys in the choir of 25ish this year is a big improvement over last year's single male. Their choir program is also not helped by having a part-time instructor but more on him later.
The other junior high benefits from having all of the experienced kids from the established elementary choir program attend it's school, and it shows. Their director is a fantastic man who is clearly loved by his 35+ students but who also has discipline with them. They sang some very hard pieces and had a good time with the whole experience. There are enough students to merit a full-time choir director but budgets being what they are, their director also teaches other classes albeit at the same school. This allows for the good bond between the choir members and their director that we see demonstrated on stage.
The last performance was by the high school choir. They sang some hard pieces and actually did a decent job. The reason I hedge this is that I'd heard so much from my daughter about how unprepared they were, how so few members choose to rehearse, and generally about the lousy work ethic that exists. I should have learned with my son, but apparently I didn't: my kids are perfectionists who eagerly notice the icky stuff but tend to ignore the good stuff.
The high school choir was about the same size as the better of the two junior high choirs but may have been a little smaller. They didn't have quite the sound and togetherness of the junior high choir either. I suspect that a large part of this is that the director of the high school choir is also the director of the smaller junior high choir. The director is very talented but he is struggling to save the chorus program at the high school. Choir interest has been waning over the last few years so this year, this director is teaching the high school choir, two english classes at the HS and is the choir director of the smaller junior high school choir.
It's no wonder my daughter complains about the lousy work ethic of the choir: the director is being pulled in too many directions and he can't afford to alienate any of the students in the class else the choir program will cease to be. It's not a good situation for him or the students, and thus was born the Pathways concert. It's no surprise that the high school is having a challenging time getting students involved in chorus since there has been only one elementary school (of 8) who has had a choir program before this year. Since the high school has a musical theatre program that routinely gets awards, the choir program should be filled with good voices and hard workers but most of them don't join the choir. I suspect they have more important things to do than to spend time in a group where many choose not to work and where there are few consequences for making that choice.
Needless to say, my daughter has opted not to do choir next year. This saddens me because she is not one of those kids who thrives on academics and homework, and she needs daily music in her life to help balance her. She wants to join my chorus after competitition and that's wonderful but a once-a-week rehearsal is not the same thing as a daily class. It also saddens me because someone who does have decent work-ethic will not be in the chorus supporting it. I'm hoping against hope that the choir director can find enough students to join choir next year so it won't be cut, and he won't be teaching still more academic classes. While I'm sure he is a competent teacher, teaching English is not where his heart lies.
So why was my daughter in tears last night? In the junior high choir, she was praised for emoting and enjoying the songs they sang. She was a joy to watch but as you can imagine, one of the very few who was animated at all and definitely one of the two who seemed to enjoy the music. That said, since the rest of the choir was fairly static and petrified, my daughter's movements caught the attention of virtually everyone watching the choir and that's not always a good thing. She's tried to mellow her movements a bit this year in the high school choir, but she's still one of the 3 kids who looks anything but petrified and is really the only one to move.
In the middle of the first song last night, the director asked my daughter to tone it down to nothing: no movement. Having been rebuked in public, she did the only thing she could think of and became totally disengaged. No one except the other chorus members could hear the rebuke but that anyone heard it at all was enough to have her completely withdraw. When the song was finished, she turned to her neighbor during the performance and tried to get clarification on the movement allowed. When the next song started, she had a smile on her face and a bit of sway in her body but because she was the only one moving, she was once again asked to tone it down. She spent the rest of the performance completely disengaged and robotic but completely still.
Let me be very clear: because no one in the choir was moving or emoting, my daughter's movements and expression stood out very clearly. I do understand why he asked her to stop. That said, he's had her in choir for almost two years. If he'd asked her to be still just before she went on stage or any other semi-private place, she'd have been annoyed but complied. By doing it in public, she felt publicly humiliated and is now certain that she won't do chorus next year.
And yes, I'm not even going to press the point that when singers aren't smiling, their sound is flat and dead which makes it virtually impossible to match notes or make a chord. I did kind of hint at it when I described the really good junior high chorus though...
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