Catching up

[Murfreesboro]

My husband always says that he was aware of me at the auditions that Thursday, and that, when I showed up in the choir at the first rehearsal and was picking up my music, he turned to his friend in the tenor section and said, "That's the woman I'm going to marry." I didn't know this until some time after we were married, and I've always wondered if it were true, but he swears he said it. He says he just knew.

But we had a wonderful time in the choir for a couple of years, performing concerts and touring to Savannah, Orlando, Washington DC, and even Europe that summer (Germany/Switzerland/Austria), all at school expense. We sold singing Christmas cards and delivered them to the dorms during December in small groups of 3 or 4. And the second semester I auditioned for and made the Chamber Singers, a madrigal group of 14 or 16, to which my husband already belonged. That was my favorite singing I've ever done, because I don't have a big, operatic voice. I was born for chamber music, that early stuff from the medieval and Renaissance periods (we did a few modern pieces, too). If I'd known about that genre sooner, I could have made a career of it. My husband's voice is gorgeous and much bigger than mine. I think he could have trained for opera, but if he'd sung professionally I'm sure he'd have gone in for jazz. He'd played in a jazz band in high school, so he was always much quicker with syncopation and unusual time signatures than I was. He regarded Al Jarreau as a musical genius and adored Mamhattan Transfer. I liked them, too, but the King's Singers were my favorite group.