Lessons and carols

Jordan is now well into his first performance season with the Performing Choir of the Northwest Boychoir. It is intense! They have eight performances of Lessons & Carols in two weeks; each performance is 90 minutes, plus another 2-3 hours of warming up, working out how they will get on and off the stage (mostly it's a new church every night), getting dressed, and so on. This is in addition to a heavy rehearsal schedule at their home base in the U-District. Everything is incredibly well-organized and well-communicated; this choir has been doing this a long time with the same highly capable staff, and they have really got the logistics down cold, thank goodness. So we have made good plans, and arranged carpools, and are supporting Jordan with lots of rest and food and encouragement in between. But still, it is a busy and hardworking season.

I ushered for the first performance, and I have to admit, the music is transportingly beautiful. I don't care for Christmas carols generally speaking, but these pieces sung by this choir are so precisely gorgeous, so classically perfect, so rich with harmonies and soaring melodies, I can't help myself. I love it. I listen over and over.

Here is an official picture of them at the concert I attended. Jordan is in the front row on the far right - a tough position, because he is highly visible, he is not comfortably surrounded by more experienced boys, and he has to start the recessional on an exact cue. (The cue is the word "let": "Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let--"). The robes they wear, and the format of the performance, are patterned after the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols performed every year by the choir of King's College in Cambridge, England, founded by Henry VI in 1441. (However, the British Lessons & Carols is only about 100 years old, and includes modern as well as ultra-traditional music.)

We are watching to see how Jordan is doing with this new height of musicianship. So far what we see is that he has a lot to manage. First of all, he had not 100% memorized everything in time for the performances, and missed two key rehearsals because he got sick, so he is straining to keep up musically. Then, there is so much to pay attention to in addition to the music: stand like this, do not look at the audience, activate your peripheral vision so you are sure to do the same thing as the person next to you, tip forward when you sit down so that your robe does not choke you at the neck, sit perfectly still and tall at the edge of your seat, hold your binder open in this hand and turn the pages with that hand, when you stand up move your binder this way so it is under this arm, remember what happens when you sing "Let." He also has a lot to deal with regarding the acoustics of the spaces they sing in: at the church in the picture above, for example, he could not hear other sections much at all, and there was an echo off the back wall that sent their sound back to them a beat or two after they made it. This is all on top of the super rigorous musical perfection they are expected to produce. I am curious whether Jordan is enjoying his performances, but I think he is mainly just working very hard to remember everything and do it all right. He says that even when there is a bit of a rest (like while another boy is doing a reading), he is going over the thousand things he needs to remember in his head.

To me, he (and the choir as a whole) seem to be pulling all this off brilliantly, but apparently things have been rocky behind the scenes. After the first concert, their director told all the new guys (except one) that they had made so many mistakes he was tempted to kick them out of the rest of the concerts, but wouldn't because he can't afford to lose their sound. Ouch. The second concert, according to the director, was no better. It is hard on us parents, picking up Jordan tired and hungry and discouraged at 9:30pm, but Jordan does not stay down for long: after a good night's sleep he feels matter-of-fact about the whole thing, and is mainly concentrating on what he needs to do better the next night. Finally, the third night, they were much improved, and the director was happy, and Jordan's sense achievement was tremendous. It was wonderful to end that first string of concerts on a good note.

We aren't sure how this is adding up yet. Is it too hard for him? Is this too much to ask of a ten-year-old? Or is this totally healthy, exactly the kind of high expectations and self-discipline that will help him develop as a musician and a person? It is hard to know for sure. Part of why it is hard to know is that we are not in the room: we do not see his interactions with his director. And this is a sign of our changing parental role as he grows into the tween years: increasingly, his interactions with authority figures are his own, not mediated by us. It is a strange feeling. However, we have every reason to be optimistic; we know that the director, the other instructors, and the other boys are providing a fantastic environment, a community of learners and mentors that we can trust to bring out the best in our kid. We have packed his world with great people and opportunities, and now he gets to make his own way. We shall see.

We all have a few days off now. Next weekend Jordan performs once at a church in West Seattle, three times at a cathedral on Capitol Hill, and then finally at Benaroya, with a symphony orchestra.