[FIPS WAS THERE…] Brooklyn Community Chorus

A few Saturday afternoons ago I was in my living room, drink in hand, proud that I’d just gotten the 1-across (Cause of an artery blockage: STREET FAIR) when the missus announced that were  going down the road to Congregation Beth Elohim to hear choral music. Naturally she had been reminding me about this obligation for a number of weeks, and naturally I unwittingly and consistently allowed it to slip my mind. Our next-door neighbor and good friend was singing in the show, and as I mulled over what a gentile should wear to a secular concert in a synagogue (went with collared shirt and pastel-colored shorts, no socks), I tried to imagine what I was about to experience. I foresaw potential for a bleak Saturday evening. Turns out I was totally wrong.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the chorus: there must have been close to a hundred people in it of all shapes, sizes and colors. They trooped in onto three tiers of risers and launched straight into the classical. The Haydn pieces were fantastic – I always love Baroque religious music because it’s a beautiful and hysterical way to endlessly repeat lines from the Bible (viz. the first movement of Handel’s Dixit Dominus of 1707, which mostly consists of the vaguely rude-sounding ‘dixit, dixit, Dominus Domino meo dixit, dixit, dixit Dominus dixit’). They sang it properly as well, with English accents that didn’t have a trace of ‘ello guvnah cheesiness anywhere near them, and with just the right amount of baroque vocal trilling. It was great! At this point all the snark had drained out of my body and I was captivated. Then the fucking soloists cranked up and holy fucking shit did some of these people have pipes. One young woman came up for a really hard solo in the Haydn and she hit a high note that would have blown my socks off were I unfashionable enough to wear them. She hit that note as crisply and cleanly as Ted Williams hit a fastball, and several other soloists throughout the show were equally good. I was flabbergasted, and the sheer shock of how good the chorus was contributed greatly to my overall experience. The last chorus performance I was at involved me staring at my feet and trying to sing low enough to sound like the boys whose voices had already broken.

Over the course of the program the chorus changed genres, soloists, and even conductors, who would pick up their music, trot smiling into the risers and be replaced by another singer. The ensemble also changed sizes – sometimes there would only be a few people on stage singing chamber music or jazz, and at one point there was an all-male South African number belted (nay, hollered) out at top volume in fucking Ndebele, and the applause afterwards was thunderous. Yes, there were some slightly cringeworthy school-chorus moments like a Beatles medley accompanied by a crap-o-matic Casio keyboard, but on the whole it was a terrific show.

Something curious happened to me during the performance, rather like the Grinch when he heard the singing in Whoville. I felt a weird and acute sense of being closer to my community, and Park Slope had become, in its way, a little more adorable and personal. I felt like a kid watching his elementary school chorus sing The Lion King, or hearing carols in the village church back home. All the Brooklynites on stage were just so fucking happy to be there, and we were equally happy to be their friends and family beaming back at them from the pews. It was, in a word, lovely, in the most mawkish and sentimental sense. The singers were all so different too, ranging from metal-mouthed teenage girls to men in their 70s and everything in between (including a fascinating, gaunt-looking man who sang the entire two-hour concert with eyes locked forward and never looked at a single sheet of music, even for songs written entirely in German, French and Latin). They were all the chorus geeks you knew from high school, in every possible variation. If you have any inclination to sing, they welcome anyone willing to come to rehearsal once a week, and their next season starts in September. Please go, be part of this sweet little village and I’ll be in the audience to clap for you. Couldn’t you use a little more applause in your life?