The Anxiety-Ridden Chorus Master

     It is one of the greatest ironies of my life that I spent so much of it working with choruses, given that I've always had a deep-rooted aversion toward that job. I wrote before that I was enlisted at a very early age (third grade) into accompanying for school choir concerts; by the time I was in middle school, I was official accompanist and rehearsal pianist for our mixed choir and madrigal group. (It wasn't until seventh grade that my choir director discovered I also had a good voice and had me sing in all the a cappella pieces.) Had I known that being rehearsal pianist also meant actually taking over in the absence of the choir director, I would have turned tail and run.

     There was one particularly painful day in the eighth grade when Miss E. had to be absent and she asked me to take the class, with one of my classmates at the piano. My pianist belonged to that elite group of pretty, popular girls that lived in the richer neighborhood; they were already under the impression (thanks to the veneer of cool aloofness behind which I hid my social anxiety disorder) that I thought my musical gifts made me superior to everyone else. In truth, she and her group, many of whom were in the choir, intimidated me to the point that I was certain my nervous shaking was visible to all as I took my place that day behind the director's music stand. I had to stand there in front of all those "prove yourself to us" faces and the ill-concealed smirk of my pianist, push my anxiety as far down into my shoes as I could, and just give it my best. I got through that agonizing hour, but not without witnessing, after the bell rang, my pianist and her friends giggling and mimicking my nervously rigid conducting gestures. Perhaps anyone would have been hurt by this, but I was a hyper-sensitive child with low self-esteem; a more confident child would probably have shaken off the dust from her shoes and moved on. As it was, the wound they inflicted that day, perhaps unconsciously, rankled deep in me through my year as student director for our high school choir, and much later throughout my fifteen years as Assistant Chorus Master at the Houston Grand Opera. Not even the genuine affection and respect the HGO Chorus and I had for each other could quite cure my aversion for running rehearsals and sectionals.

     Behind it also were the high expectations of my teachers and elders, my own high standards (which grew more and more impossible with each passing year), an enormous fear of failure, and the equally enormous if irrational fear of being found out as a sham. For all my talent and training, and all my bravado, I was still at the core that awkward, inept, and insecure child.

     You might be asking why, then, I consented to be HGO's Assistant Chorus Master. Deep down, I knew I could do it, and do it well. I had all the necessary tools for what that job entailed, including, by that time, good conducting skills (thanks to lessons from two gifted and generous conductors, Ward Holmquist and Patrick Summers). And I had the unflagging support and confidence of the Chorus Master, Richard Bado, for whom I had, and will always have, tremendous respect. So I forced myself to ignore the sickening churning in my stomach before every rehearsal and sectional I had to run, and told myself (to quote my fellow S. A. D. sufferer, Mr. Darcy) "I will conquer this!" And conquer it I did. That terrified young girl who was mocked by her peers grew up to be a good Assistant Chorus Master (and, for some shows, Chorus Master) -- even if she never really liked being one.