Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
A magical musical event happened around me recently.
An offering had arrived via email to attend a concert by the Vanderbilt Chorale at a small, local venue. The tickets were $10 per person. How could I pass up that?
The one-night concert, however, was March 3, the day after the devastating wind storms downed trees and left hundreds of thousands without power in Virginia. We hesitated about going because the venue, the Theater House at Castleton Festival, is located in rural Rappahannock County. We weren’t sure if we’d encounter impassable roads.
While we were debating about venturing out, the nice people at Castleton called to say the local roads had been cleared and even though the Theater was without power, they were running generators and the show would go on.
Well, how could we say we wouldn’t be attending with that kind of “can do” spirit?
We usually sit close to the stage at Castleton, but I had impulsively chosen balcony seats for the event.
It’s not the type of balcony you might be imagining. As noted, this is a small and beautiful, acoustically balanced venue. The balcony is a square U-shape with ONE layer of seating on the three sides.
As we took our seats, I was kicking myself for choosing the balcony, as I noted it would be difficult to see the singers directly below us.
To my surprise, though, as the concert began, the young singers filed up the steps to the balcony level, and took their places standing directly behind the seated patrons, including us. They stayed on the balcony for several songs.
Sopranos and altos were behind me to the right with tenors and basses off to my left. On the side directly across the open space and also on the side to my left was the same set-up. Stereo, it was, because yes, they were singing directly into my ears.
It was all I could do to not shout with joy from pure delight. “This must be what Heaven sounds like,” was my recurring thought. I just closed my eyes and savored every musical moment of the pure, clear voices blending together.
And here’s what else I loved—their breathing. Singers take big breaths in order to produce good sound. It’s not noticeable when you’re sitting in an audience while the singers are on a stage in front of you.
But having the experience of “surround sound” as we did, it was as though those big breaths were part of the music.
The music and the breaths combined to make a memory that still fills me with joy.
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Here are links to topics in this post:
A sample of the non-chorale music Note: You can see where we sat….in the balcony next to the life-size statue of Mozart!
