Musical Memory Lane Part II

Let me regress to high school years briefly, for this was a period in my life where I began to realize that I could sing, could carry a tune accurately, stay on pitch, and read the alto part mostly successfully. So I joined the high school choir which introduced me to some show tunes (even though I hadn't seen the movies!), classical religious choral music, and choral renditions of folk tunes and other non-Baptist hymnody.

So I wasn't musically illiterate when I headed off to college at Linfield, a historically Baptist college but moderately liberal in its outlook on life, with historical rather than literal studies on religious topics.

Two of the first things I did at Linfield were to join a sorority and, second semester, to audition for the a cappella choir.  The sorority was local, not national, but it offered opportunities for socializing and projects with other young women.  Phi Beta Mu was a good place for me to make new friends and the choir an entirely new musical experience.

Linfield's a cappella choir was directed by a well-known Oregon conductor and musician, Dr. Robert Zimmerman who also directed the Portland symphony and chorale.  He was an exacting director, always helping us learn the skills of musicality ("you're sharp!  you're flat!" were shouted out as necessary during rehearsals) and performance (we memorized everything, we were schooled in walking onto risers, exiting the stage without stumbling, looking professional on stage, etc.).

And we sang the most beautiful religious and secular music I'd ever heard:  classics like the Faure' Requiem, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Peaceable Kingdom, Gershwin selections, show tunes, even some pop oldies that met Zim's critical standards.

We had fun, we traveled on fall and spring tours, singing nightly in Baptist churches all up and down the Pacific Northwest, romances sprang up in the chartered bus seats between the singers and the instrumentalists, our bus driven by a genial, chubby man we called Lefty, whose musical contribution was his effort to convince us that he could sing fugues.  

We sang regularly at major college occasions like graduation, welcoming new students, and Parents' Weekend.  There was status in being in the choir.  We rehearsed two or three times a week for two hours and were granted the privilege of coming to supper in the Commons late on those days because we were similar to the famous Linfield Wildcats in terms of cachet.  I was in heaven, never having had that sort of public approval in my young life!