Postcard from Brigadoon

One week ago right about now I landed at the airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, a little weary after 25 hours of traveling, but very excited for the Denison Singers reunion weekend. I already knew it was going to be magnificent—emails had been circumnavigating the globe for weeks and it was clear the “Singers of the ‘80s” were the dominant era in the gathering of 42 years of alumni of the Denison Singers.

However, there were many reasons not to attend the reunion: it cost too much money for a few days, a marriage was unraveling, a daughter had hurt herself the day before, a bank deal needed to be finalized, an infant should not be abandoned, doctoral work cannot just be suspended, the school year had just started, a business relationship was souring, a family had just moved into their new home and boxes weren’t even unpacked, it was silly to travel clear across the country, what about the high school reunion that needed to be forfeited for this concert weekend?

Those were the real-world things going on with my cohorts as we checked in and sighed about how it made little sense to some people for us to indulge in a reunion. We had just met in Winston-Salem in April, 2008!

One of our friends noted that with the arrival of our generation on Facebook, that social networking site helped facilitate catching up anyway. There had to be something more than just catching up. And there is/was—the music.

Last week as we landed and checked into our Hawthorne hotel we knew that within 72 hours we would deliver a concert and then scatter to the winds. We had come together for the music, for the chance to create a balanced sound with some people with whom we had never sung, work hard for up to 6 hours a day, and see what came of it.

As I said in the last blog entry, there is a core group of the faithful, the hardcore, the ones who have shown up in Granville or Winston-Salem for many of the 11 previous reunions. We wanted to see what our breath support was like, our pitch, our sight-reading abilities, our capacity to process and produce in under 72 hours.

Fast forward to the concert on Sunday afternoon. Let me describe where I stood during the concert at Augsburg Lutheran church. To my right was Rick, the tenor with whom I have sung for the longest in my life, now 27 years strong, and a remarkable tenor voice. He had spent considerable time organizing the logistics of this reunion and produced a spreadsheet with absolutely every answer to our many questions. But he wasn’t just a cruise director—his graciousness and kindness set the tone for the weekend. To my left is my newest lifelong friend from the Denison Singers, Jeff. Since 2003 when I met Jeff, a fresh-faced alum 16 years my junior, we discovered how much we both loved this group together. We have spent reunions in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2009 marveling at our parallel Denison experiences. After each reunion we write melancholic emails wishing it didn’t have to end. Behind me is Ken, the rock of our tenor section, and a strikingly talented sight-reader. Each time I meet Ken again I marvel at his balance as a father, businessman, musician, church leader and friend. In front of me is Sharon, she of the original friends I inducted into my personal Travel Hall of Fame and another lifelong friend. Sharon and I have a mission not to let more than a year pass without a visit to each other. I keep thinking all of these are lifelong friends.

And that is just in the immediate vicinity! All around me are these friends, business people, teachers, scientists, social workers, executives, administrators, musicians, professors who have come together to tackle the music of Purcell, Haydn, Brahms, Britten, and a few contemporary composers. We know this is special. It’s not like the line in Joni Mitchell song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” where she moans, “Don’t it always seem to go/that you don’t know what you’ve got/till it’s gone.”

Todd has traveled from Arizona. He and Tracy went to school together from pre-school through Denison, and they opted out of their high school reunion to partake in our concert stylings. Heidi completed the triumvirate that had been the seniors when I was a freshman in college. All three of them invested themselves in the group and made sure my freshman class understood the nature of this organization. How wonderful to see them with the complete senior group of my year. When I was a senior I consciously tried to model myself after their leadership my freshman year.

There’s Marnie, the effervescent elfin music teacher, and Lizbeth, the dynamic soprano whose laugh always excites. There’s Jeff, our talented friend who writes parodies of Broadway show tunes to honor and gently mock WO. Sarah returned after a 14-year hiatus from the reunions, singing in a compelling voice that has only ripened with age and experience. There’s Stephanie who just oozes warmth and charisma, and Scott, the young man who stole Marnie’s heart way back in the mid-1980s.

Each of these friends is so interesting—I hesitate to try and define or qualify how and why, but talking with them about their work, their families, their passions, makes me feel all the more blessed to know them. Jeff, that tenor “baby” from WO’s last year railed that we “Singers of the 80s” traveled in packs all weekend. Well, it is true, we met for breakfast, and didn’t part all day until we decided after midnight that we better rest our voices a little.

Then we would meet at 8:00 for breakfast and begin all over again, enjoying bawdy jokes and private jokes during rehearsal, trying to crack the complex harmonies and the Latin and German all while the clock ticked away at our under-72 hours challenge of creating our concert.

In the Broadway musical, Big, based on the Tom Hanks film, there is a tender moment when the mother peers into the baby’s cradle and sings her wish that time could just stop. She sings,

You want to say, “Stop, time”
Don't move on…

…you say, ”Stop, time”
Stay just this way
But the future comes and he can't stay

Nobody warns you of this parent's paradox
You want your kid to change and grow
But when he does, another child you've just begun to know
Leaves forever
Birthdays fly - 7, 8, 9, 10
Every kid he becomes you clutch and say “Stop, time”
Hold this one fast
But it's not supposed to last…”

Sunday afternoon comes. We know the tick-tock is winding down. We sang three anthems and all the hymns and responses in church that morning. The time had come to see if the weekend delivered a credible concert. The Britten is pretty easy, but fun and bombastic. The Renaissance motet tested our balance and breath support. The Purcell has a haunting quality and a resonance that is surprising. The Brahms sounded like an aching wish that beauty would last. The world premiere pieces had a verve and excitement we didn’t anticpate. Indeed—one of the themes in these reunions is guessing after the first rehearsal which piece we are most wrong about. From a superficial reading we think we are going to hate a piece or two—mostly because they are hard—and we love to see which pieces to which we grow most attached in our marathon rehearsals. We finally come to the finale with Franck and Haydn, nifty choral warhorses and opportunities to make music with the great organ in the church.

The concert ends and as we move off from in front of the church the exodus begins. People must get to the airport. Brigadoon is vaporizing as time flies.

In the next day emails and texts and calls abound as we wish each other well and look forward to the next gathering in June, 2011.

But today, there are fewer greetings. The real world reclaims us as we cull the rivulets of the weekend’s work.

On Monday night, finally arriving in Cincinnati for this week’s rest before going back to Jordan, I had the words of Robert Browning comforting me as I recited, “Come grow old with me, the best is yet to come.”

In the past quarter century as this unusual group gathers again and again to create a concert out of 72 hours time, we have heeded that call. I noticed that in the men’s section, only two of us now are without gray hair—the babies at age 29. We meet every couple of years, and each time it feels it is the best time.

I will be winging my way back to Jordan tomorrow, quite satisfied with how I spent my Eid break, enjoying the connections and counting down to the 21 months from right now when we will watch our Brigadoon come to life once again.