I have always been a rehearsal freak. I love rehearsal. I love the trial and error of play practice. The shaping of character choices you can only accomplish with hours of hard work and repetition. I love that time. In fact, truth be told, I actually love it more than the actual performance. Then the baby has been delivered. The nine months of incubation has come to a close. It’s always been kind of a letdown for me.
On Tuesday, I got called by a friend to see if I would be game to do some caroling at a country club on Sunday. Being that I am a whore for money, and that I really don’t know how to say no…I said sure. I love Christmas songs. I start to listen to them in early November. No problem. She told me that someone would be contacting me to give me the music and a cd of a few of the songs, so I could see what they did. Oh, and did I sight read. Again, no problem, I can rely on the piano, to give me a clue on what to sing.
Friday night, the girl I’m going to sing with drops off the music. Into the CD player, I pop the cd. Out come this intricate, 3 part harmony, acapella, do-wop songs. Most of which I had never heard of. Where was the Upon the Housetop? Missing was Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer. Frosty the Snowman was nowhere to be seen. Even Silent Night wasn’t on the record. I felt my blood pressure rise. What had I signed on for? The gig was Sunday. I already had a show scheduled for Saturday, so I wasn’t going to be rehearsing on Saturday. Was I was going to carol in front of people with NO REHEARSAL? Not just no rehearsal…I had never met these girls, let alone had ever sung with them. Could I hold the book? Did they expect this to be memorized? I had to run out and get a turtleneck, for god’s sake; it was part of my costume. If there was costumes, than this wasn’t something that we could just slap together. The audience was going to expect it to be good. Right?
Sweating, I arrived at the club on Sunday morning. The singers greet me and we talk about what we are going to try and sing today. I’m to sing the alto part, which I already knew…it had added to my stress. Here I was a soprano, someone blessed with singing the melody almost every time I opened my mouth, and I was going to try to sing alto with no rehearsal! Okay, we agree that most of the material on the cd is just too difficult to try and pull off. We would just make a list of things we thought we could fake harmony for and sing that. Oh, and take requests.
The next thing I knew, we were in the dining room singing in front of people. And you know what, it didn’t sound half bad. Oh sure, there were a few times that I couldn’t find that damn fifth and I had to jump to the melody line. And you know how you can listen to a song for years, but when someone asks you to sing it…suddenly you don’t know that words? The crazy thing was although some of the harmonies were a bit funky and sometimes we didn’t know the words, the audience seemed more than pleased. One lady, albeit older than God, said she had just been to see the symphony and we were just as good as the chorus. That reminds me of all of those “joyed it lines” from my youth. One time a lady came through and stopped in front of me. “One day you are going to be a star. In time, in time.” I can still hear her in my head. People.
You know what valuable lesson I learned today? To lighten up and trust my instincts. I have been working on music since 2nd grade. I can fake a harmony line with the best of them. I need to remind myself, that my whole life has been one long rehearsal. I should trust the process; it will always be there to be my safety net. And for the love of god, have fun.
