That Old Song

Today I sang. A lot. I greeted the month of November and the blessed fallback time change (it's like a six month sleep loan that you pay back in April) with a 7:30 AM call for two All Saints Day services at St. Matthew's. If you've never heard of a necrology, you don't want to. Yet even still, I love going to St. Matthew's and singing with that choir. Just love it!

Then later I attended a rehearsal for Michele Weir's Christmas Singers, at which I learned that since last year I leapfrogged a number of other tenors to go from bottom rung alternate to first call. I'm told that's fairly uncommon, and in any event a welcome surprise. I could use as many gigs this season as possible.

Most surprising, though, is how my range has continued to grow into my 30's. Somehow, over the course of the last twelve years or so, I've gone from being a bona fide bass II to nearly a legit tenor I. I'm comfortably singing notes now that during high school and college I would never have dreamed of hitting (well, actually, I did dream of hitting them). And not punching them but floating them, controlled and on my breath.

Best of all, my voice is holding up through long days, getting stronger in fact. There was a time in college when I nearly lost my voice entirely, and since coming to LA, I more or less wrote off my singing voice as merely serviceable, and a skill I'd rather not utilize. Having gone away from singing regularly for years, I'm suddenly finding myself intensely singing at minimum four days a week, and getting paid reasonably well for it.

I've had some chats with people about this kind of thing. For instance, I  learned from a female acquaintance who is a masterful french horn player that she spent several years not even picking up the horn. Same for a buddy who is a virtuosic upright bass player. At some point their tremendous gifts for their instruments became something of a weight to bear, or they hit an unexpected speedbump, or they didn't want to lean upon that talent to get them through the door anymore. They stepped away from their instruments, only to return some time later to re-stoke their passion and re-energize their careers.

I'm coming full circle with my voice. I'm still committed to becoming a filmmaker and a screenwriter, among other endeavors. And I don't think I'll ever give myself over to rebuilding the classical solo chops and repertoire I once had. But I'm remembering the immense joy that choral and vocal jazz music once brought me, and craving it more and more. I've been hiding that light under a bushel for a while now, which has been quite a detriment to my self-expression.

Consequently, the more I re-visit that part of my life, the more I reclaim something of the youthful fervor and confidence that I thought had been suppressed by the vicissitudes of Los Angeles living. Turns out I was doing most of the suppressing myself.

A Sinatra song comes to mind:

We used to dance
Instead of walk
We used to sing
Instead of talk


But you forgot all the words
While I still remember the tune


JS