Yeah, concerts are cool but that’s only a few nights a year, right? If we didn’t like gathering for a few hours each week to rehearse it wouldn’t matter HOW cool a concert is…we wouldn’t show up. And if the simple act of singing was the reason we gathered…shoots, we can do that in the shower or the car. Nope, there’s more going on there and I think it all boils down to two basic things.

First is the shared experience of singing in a choir. There’s nothing that sounds like voices massed together singing in harmony and, once you’ve participated in such a thing for a little while, it’s an addictive little beast. Our weather-cancelled rehearsal last night is a perfect example…the word didn’t go out until late in the afternoon after the weather update and I was already in get-my-brain-ready-to-sing mode (and couldn’t get a couple of our tunes out of my head). When I got the cancellation email there was a palpable letdown, a small but recognizable bit of disappointment. What…no harmony-induced endorphins this week? Crap.

The second is the journey, a truly long and winding road given the repertoire that WE sing. Over the course of a few months we take some pretty dang challenging stuff from the initial “oh my…that was horrific” to the final “oh my…that was epic” and the PROCESS is one of the things that drives us. When the gauntlet is thrown down with something like “Glow” there’s an immediate squaring of the shoulders and rising of our inner stubborn singer and we begin with the notes and forge on ahead (okay…after maybe a little twinge of panic and yet another moment for the thought “Susie lost her marbles THIS time” to zip quickly through the mind).

There are multiple levels of the rewards associated with the journey and that makes it even better. We’re rewarded with the feedback that we get from the boss-lady is we start to pull things together over those months. We’re personally rewarded as we learn our parts and travel our way through the adventure of turning them into something amazing. We’re rewarded as a group as we share in each other’s successes. All these pieces of the journey combine to bring us together each week and coming back year after year.

And oh yeah…there are concerts too. And they’re really cool.