My Choir

I conduct a community choir on Monday nights. We are a broad spectrum in age... our youngest member is 4 months old!! and I don't even know who our oldest is or how old. Like most USA choirs we have more women than men. We range from highly educated to laborers, we tend to lean a little on the liberal side politically, though I have taken pains to make sure that the organization does not take a partisan stand on any issue, and we have members who have pretty conservative views on certain issues. We are not a church choir although we do meet at the Unitarian church. I got talked into sort of taking over and rejuvenating an old hippy-days choir that had been falling apart at the seams about three years ago. But I didn't want to have one of those groups of tired fifty + somethings that have singalongs where they drone Blowin in the wind and old Pete Seeger songs flat ONE...MORE...TIME. I agreed to do it only if part of the stated charter of the group was to develop musically and to get a diverse repertoire including some classical. We perform at old folks homes and community events mostly, and occasionally give the Unitarian church choir a break and pay the Unitarians back for allowing us to use their facility. Just recently we have begun meeting in the church sanctuary, which is a much better rehearsal space than the long tunnel like RE wing where we used to meet. As we have grown, we have also been able to pay a professional accompanist, which frees me to focus on the music. I had a crash course in conducting a couple years ago but most of my knowledge of it is simple OJT. I myself sing in the Corvallis Repertory Singers, http://corvallisrepertorysingers.org, which is always a joyful, high energy experiece. Not only do I love singing in CRS, but I shamelessly choral drills, warmups, methods and other techniques from our director, Dr. Steven Zielke, and try them out on my choir. Steve has been an inspiration to me. Corvallis Community Choir may never be the Mormon tabernacle choir, but we have fun, and I am privileged to enable a large number of people to enjoy singing and making music together.