I was grateful to be part of the performance: the music was deep and true, and Christopher Clowdus, the conductor, is warm, clear, and bright. I’d auditioned last spring, for a Mendelssohn program, and continued this fall when Christopher proposed The Poet…, which led to the comic and humbling experience of having to having to sing my own diminished fourths.  (Had I known we were going to do this piece this year, I’d have auditioned for the first tenor section: I knew the tune going in.) As a singer, I’ve no plans to give up my day job: but I think it’s as needful as oxygen for composers, especially of vocal work, to remember that we’re not so much writing as choreographing for the voice.  The score is not the event: it’s a design for an event in which the hearts and minds of both performer and listener connect by a thread of breath.  It’s all too easy to forget that if your principal instrument is Sibelius 6.

Obviously I’m delighted with the performances—what composer isn’t?–but the sweetest part of all of it is letting go of the “had I only.”  Out they go, into the world!   Meanwhile, back to The New Testament: Draft Two.