Thursday, March 15, 2007

Ward Choir Strikes Again!

I forgot to post this on Sunday, so I'm posting it now. We had choir practice after church on Sunday afternoon. Now, I'd like you all to remember that Easter is April 8. The week before is General Conference, so there will be no choir practice then, and the week before that is Fast Sunday, and they don't like the choir to meet on Fast Sundays, so no practice that week either. This means that we have 2 practices before our Easter program. Right, we saw the song the choir is singing on Sunday. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it was a hymn or something, but we are singing "This is the Christ," which is a tricky little song. If you've heard it before, you know what I'm talking about. Lots of funny intervals, weird notes, etc. It's tricky. We have about 9 people in our choir, and about 3 of those say they don't know how to sing. Excitement galore. This is on top of the fact that we don't actually have a choir director, the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric just thought we needed a choir so he started one up, but he has meetings after church on Sundays. So he's in and out, running around, trying to take care of all his duties. The first week we met, he explained that he is the "temporary" choir director, and they are looking for volunteers of people who want to lead the choir. Volunteers? Nobody is going to volunteer for that job, let's be honest. If they called me in and officially extended the calling to me, I'd do it, but I'm certainly not going to volunteer.

So we're trying to figure out parts, singing our song, Bro Robbins comes back in to help us out, and he says, "And this is where Shannon is going to sing." Um, apparently he had signed me up for a solo section without actually telling me that. I'll do it, it's fine, I've sung the song before so I know how it goes, but he made it sound like we had talked about it before, and we most certainly had not. Just another example of people in the church burdening the music people. It happens all the time ("Can you play today for RS?" "Oh, we switched the hymns on you today, is that going to be ok?" "We need a pianist for tomorrow, can you play this song that you've never heard before?"), so we aren't surprised.

2 comments:

Sabrina said...

Sounds like that's somewhat of an ambitious undertaking, but it is a beautiful song, and I am sure your solo will be fabulous as always. I am sure music people are burdened by us not so musical people, but I'd probably give my right hand if I could sing like you, so at least you've got that :)

W.L.Platt said...

This is in the category of "you think you've got problems!" Maybe it will make you feel better if you know that our ward choir is attempting to sing "Deep Peals of Thunder" as one of five numbers still in early rehearsal for Easter - and we are supposed to sing at a joint meeting for dedicating our new meetinghouse on the 25th of this month. Our choir has dwindled to maybe 18-20 people, but they are never all there at one time. I would love it if you would move into our ward so you could sing a solo for us! Your choir will be fine in spite of the drama. Ours - I don't know!