Singing ...

again, and always

Me singing with Portland Sage Singers (I’m middle bottom)

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I'm a day late this week because I wanted to write to you about my Sunday. I spent nearly the entire day singing!

First I sang with practice tracks for our choir's next concert (Portland Sage Singers at The Reser, December 3rd. Tix will go on sale in October.) Then I sent to actual practice where we sang for 2 1/2 hours. After practice, my friend Pam and I went out to dinner before going to the Portland Lesbian Choir's sing-along event at the Clinton Theater to sing along with West Side Story.

Last season I auditioned and sang as an Alto. Not only Alto, but Low Alto. But the songs we sang had us singing so high, I decided this year to be a Soprano 2. To be honest, the songs have some notes I can't quite reach yet, but I have faith I'll be there before our concert. Right now, I just don't sing on those notes. But at home I practice trying to reach them, and sometimes I do.

You don't have to sing with a choir to sing, of course. But I had fallen out of the habit of singing for myself, of singing for fun. In fact, I hadn't sung in public for almost forty years.

The first time I sang in public I was three years old. Mom enrolled me in dance class because I was so shy (around people I didn't know). On the first day, Miss Zoe went around the room with a microphone. Each child said their name into the mic. But when it was my turn, I was already at the door wanting out. As she came near me, I tried to shrink into the crack of the door. I did not say my name. But Mom took me to class every week. We learned tap, acrobatic, and ballet. My next memory of the class is little me standing on a table singing Four and Twenty Blackbirds into a microphone.

At six, we were at church morning when the children attended the service for some reason. It might have been my first time attending the service (except when the Sunday School performed for the adults). A woman was singing a "special" otherwise known as a solo. I asked Mom how the woman got to do that. Mom said to ask her. So after the service, I made a beeline for the soloist and asked her "how did you get to do that?" She asked me if I wanted to sing in front of the congregation and I said yes, and soon I was singing "specials" myself.

At twelve I was singing at weddings. At fourteen I took my first voice lessons. I became the High School Soloist. I performed at baccalaureate services and graduations. I participated in contests.

In my twenties I sang a social sorority events (I sang Bali Hai at a party when I was five months pregnant with my daughter).

In my thirties I wrote music, and I sang in plays. And I always always sang around the house and in the car, in the shower, even in my sleep.

When I was thirty-nine, I fell in love with a singer. And I stopped singing. She was the singer, I was the writer. She didn't want us to sing together, and I didn't want to argue. I did sing for my fortieth birthday party. I took lessons for three months before the party, because the "party," was a performance I created for fifty of my closest friends and family. I sang, I tap-danced, I did an improve sketch, and I stripped naked. (My daughter was mortified; my friends still talk about the fact I got naked.)

Then I stopped singing.

The fall before Covid (fall 2019) I decided to join a choir and start singing again. My partner and I had split long ago and were still friends (that's for life!) But I'd never started singing again. But now I was living in California far from my friends and all family except my daughter (we moved together). I hadn't been able to make new friends in our conservative mobile home park.

I had gone to a community college in San Diego to see something, and I came across a notice on a bulletin board. They had a community choir for adults over fifty-five. I signed up and started singing. I assumed I could still sing soprano, so I tried. I pretty quickly moved to second soprano. Our choir director loved performing songs from other countries. So 99% of our songs were in languages not English. And not Romance Languages either. Slavic and African languages were her faves. Not easy music, but I was game.

Then Covid happened. She tried to teach us over Zoom, but she tried to conduct class as if we were still in the classroom, and it didn't work for me. I left that choir.

I joined the San Diego Women's Choir, all on Zoom. I learned to record my voice, and to videotape myself singing. Then I thought at long as everything was on Zoom anyway, I might as well join the Portland Lesbian Choir (PLC), where I could at least pretend I was back in Portland.

In San Diego Women's Choir, I was singing second Alto. At PLC this translated to Bass.

Me, 3rd from right on bottom

We moved back to Portland in October 2021. I couldn't keep up with PLC because moving took too much time ... getting settled was a full time job for me for months.

By the time I could try out in person for PLC, they didn't need my low voice; they had grown from less than forty members to over one hundred (now they're approaching two hundred members).

I despaired of ever singing in a choir again. Then Portland Sage Singers was formed, and I became a founding member! We have the amazing Dr. Tim Seelig as our Artistic Director. Auditions are loving and easy. Every one of us is over fifty-five years of age (a requirement), and our first corporate was AARP.

I love singing. I love going to choir practice. I love challenging myself to learn all the words quickly so I can focus on the director. We aren't required to learn all the songs (this season it's four songs), but I learned all of them last time, and I'm on my way already this time.

Do you sing? Do you belong to a choir? Do you go to choir concerts? (My grandson is in five choirs. I go to a lot of concerts.)