Before Riverdance, Before Green Bagels...

So there’s now only hours left in which to blog about St. Patrick’s Day.   If you’ve read this blog before (or even just the title) you already know that Michael Bloomberg and I are about equally Irish (well actually him a bit more, since I’m sure he attends the parade, he’s probably been to Ireland at least once, and I think he wears those white cableknit sweaters even on other days).

Of course I usually try to wear some green on St. Patrick’s Day and always did when I was a kid, simply because it was fun to match everyone else in school and on the street. Here was harmless conformity that didn’t threaten or conflict with my Jewish identity; it was in fact a perfect fit with my New York Cityness, in my outer-borough way, and my parents’ before me.  Weren’t our neighbors, on the other side of the wall that separates row houses in Queens, born-in-Ireland Irish? Mrs. Vardi even had a brogue.  Even our teachers were more Irish than anything else, in those years before the wave of graduating Jewish ed majors crested. Our principal was a Miss Calahan.  For third grade, Mrs. Mulhern.

Pupils and teachers, Irish and not, all held some kind of St. Patrick’s Day observance every year. So on this particular March 17 of the sixties, here’s me, six years old, sitting with my similarly green-clad schoolmates in the auditorium of PS 102 Queens, where the teacher at the piano is playing Irish music.  There’s a nice, deep, wood-paneled proscenium stage in front and framed prints of famous paintings on the walls; paintings, like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and  Seurat’s La Grande Jatte,  that I will recognize for the rest of my life as those I first met in PS 102. Of course there’s an American flag in one corner and I think the flag of New York City, the one with the windmill and beaver, in the other.

That day some teacher asked -- I forget who -- if anyone knew how to dance an Irish jig. I know this was loooong before Riverdance.  I think it was long before the Irish dancing trend hit regular neighborhood kids. Far as I know, none of my friends took Irish dancing lessons, and while I remember the strange sight of miniature bridal gowns (or so they looked to me) on seven-year olds in the spring, I never saw any kids (and certainly not the O’Hares on my block) sporting any of those $500-and-up Irish dancing costumes kids get today with the stiff, short flared skirts and the elaborate piping.

But at some point in my six years to that point, I must’ve seen some Irish people, or non-Irish people, dancing jigs. It looked to me like a simple matter of raising your knee and kicking or toe-stepping your foot at three corners of an imaginary square. So I raised my hand.  I distinctly remember my teacher, knowing that I had to be one of the least Irish people at PS 102 Queens (this being years before the Asian influx), exchanging  glances with the piano-playing teacher and shrugging.  

Then she nodded to me, I went up to the middle of the stage, the piano player played, and I proceeded to do my best approximation of an Irish jig, steps I must’ve seen on Ed Sullivan, or Danny Kaye, or (the previous year, before getting the bus for afternoon kindergarten) Captain Kangaroo. 

My dancing wasn’t good enough to draw applause or bad enough to offend.  What it did do was encourage all the kids with just slightly less chutzpah to suddenly remember that they knew how to do the Irish jig, too, and pretty soon, one by one, we amassed a whole stage full of Irish jiggers, all high stepping and kicking into the corners of their imaginary squares.

That’s all I remember about that.  This is a memory of a fearlessness that must have hit its peak when I was six, on a day before the dawn of doubt.  

Seven Choirs Communing

I used to think that when my kids were grown and I had more time I would finally indulge my inner ham and join a community theater group.  Before I got around to doing that, though, I followed a friend - a fellow ham but also a wonderful singer -- into a community choir.  Soon after that, Thursday night rehearsals became my favorite part of the week. 

I decided that community theater was no loss; perhaps a clash of egos competing for roles, a potential stress and another source of isolation in an already isolated work week. Choir, on the other hand, is communion. I sing one alto strand that braids itself into all the other strands, spinning and weaving harmonies.  Spiritually and emotionally, a group hug in a warm wrap. 

I found this choir -- where else -- in my Jewish community, following the friend with the voice. (I found the friend through about seven years of Purim shpiels, where he’s typically played Haman and sung the best songs, Snidely Whiplash-style.) He’s excellent -- going pro, in fact --- but our choir isn’t particularly fussy.  Considering that it takes anyone from nearby zip codes who can carry a tune, we sound pretty good.  I hear there were years we played Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

Our choir has been directed and conducted for all of its 21 years by two now fifty-something cantors, one male, one female, giving a kind of family-unit feeling to the enterprise.  Many of us "children" have been with the choir for its whole existence. I joined four years ago.

Our repertoire is remarkably varied and sometimes jazzy, coming out of an apparently flourishing composer culture of English, Hebrew and Yiddish choral music.  (Did you know that there’s a whole, quite professional chorus in NYC that sings entirely in Yiddish?)

Speaking good Hebrew and fair Yiddish, I have the linguistic advantage, but I don't read music, and that would be the more useful fluency here. I've learned a bunch of Italian music terms. I've also gotten a teeny bit better at guessing note intervals and keeping note length and tempo in mind, but I have to memorize the music by hearing it, and fast -- unless the conductors have recorded the parts for us, to CD or web. I find musical memory fascinating… Ever notice how there’s no conscious storage or retrieval? If you’ve got it down, the notes just spool out. 

It would help if I could read, though. I am too easily swept off the alto track and onto the soprano line. I often throw ego aside really late into the rehearsal schedule to sit next to a more steadfast alto, to get the lost pitches back into my ear. 

I'm impressed by the conductors, who can give every section its starting note and hear one mistake among thirty people singing four- and five-part harmonies.  I'm amazed by our accompanist, whose fingers are so brain-mapped to the piano keyboard that he can speak in music, pulling off a wordless joke with a well-timed riff of anything you might recognize, perfectly rendered. He can play anything he hears.

Rehearsal in the pews, with this David, the cantors, the group and a real grand piano is the best part; breaking down the unfamiliarity, internalizing the melody and then "cleaning up" the rough parts till we get the blends, the precision and the modulation that makes an arrangement work and Daddy happy. (Mommy is somewhat easier to please.)

Even better is rehearsing with other choirs, in their churches and in our synagogues. We do this for a couple months before the "Sing Out" festival that's on its way to becoming a biannual tradition at the Newark Museum.   We perform separately and all together, and we practice with people we’d otherwise never meet; the Maplewood Glee Club, the North Jersey Philharmonic Glee Club, the Elmwood United Presbyterian Church Celebration Mass Choir.  A more exciting communion for being shared this wide, across religion and race.  Why do I get such a kick out of being conducted by the musical director of Prospect Presbyterian?  Similar warm-ups, similar directions to shape our mouths, drop the “r”s, breathe or not breathe … in Jason Asbury’s relatively understated style, with his own form of irony. Fascinating…

A lot is made at the concert’s opening remarks of diversity and bridge-building. It's a little embarrassing, as a) there's a sense that any talk of interracial “progress”  more properly belongs to another century; I can picture my kids telling me to get over this “otherness” thing. But b) it's not; where else do I do anything social with African American/black people, aside from an odd friend at my bubble’s periphery? Where else do I have any chance to hear this wonderfully rendered "Here's One," in person?  Yeah, it's got lots of Jesus in it… so not my brand.  But so beautifully hushed and swelled, so beautifully shaped by the conductor's expressive hands...that we're all inspired. 

We're also outclassed. "Ok, you win," says a choir friend in the Celebration choir’s direction, applauding.  This group sings at NJ PAC in Newark and Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta; for sure they're way more selective than us.  But that's ok.  I’ll do my best and look for them on YouTube.

We've also got 60 or so sweet young things from Montclair State, in matching long black dresses and matching length pearls, matching jackets and ties.  Their singers, too, have much more power and training.  They have a soloist who sends everyone to their feet. And maybe 40 even sweeter, even younger members of the Newark Boys' Choir.

At the concert’s end, this past Sunday, all 250 of us get to stand and sing together, led by a famous conductor of symphony orchestras from Vancouver to New Zealand.  Jacques LaCombe conducts an Aaron Copland piece we’d learned separately and run through with our sections combined a few times a few hours before. We sound transcendent.