Saturday night with the Chiba Singers

I had my first conducting opportunity in Chiba on Saturday night. I left the house a few minutes before 5:00, and it was a good thing, too. When I traveled to Chiba with Marcel L'Esperance, we took a rather round about way to get there. I looked at the map, and thought I could get there more directly, but I was wrong. Remember the story I told early in our adventure, when everyone got off the train but Robin and I? Well, it happened again, only I know better now, but I was reading a book and wasn't paying attention. AND it happened at the same place. Luckily, this time, I had the presence of mind to hop off at the next stop and figure out how to bypass the loop from hell and back. No worries! I hopped the next train that seemed to be heading again in the right direction, but still had help from a woman who watched me studying my map with crinkled, worry-face. She came over and sat next to me and told me that I still had to get on an even different train to get all the way to to my stop, Inage, near Chiba. I was starting to nervously check my watch, because I was supposed to meet Yoko Sugita at the station at 6:30. Just then she called to say that she was stuck in traffic, so it worked out fine. Cell phones are great. (Now I know why Marcel went the way he did!)

Before we started rehearsal, Yoko and I were chatting, and I admitted that I was a little bit nervous. She seemed surprised, and asked me why I should feel that way after all my years of experience. I told her that I had never rehearsed a group IN JAPAN before. She just laughed, patted me on the arm and said, "Our faces are different," then she patted her heart, "but our hearts are the same." That's all I needed to hear. I had a great time. I think the group did too, as there were many smiling faces and some chuckles during rehearsal. My job is to work with them on the Birthday Madrigals by John Rutter. It is a 5 movement piece; a jazzy contemporary arrangement of Shakespearian texts. Not easy music by any measure, but really nice stuff. At one point during rehearsal, one of the men told me how to say "from the beginning" in Japanese. It is: a-ta-ma ka-re. Atama meaning head, and kare, from. Later in the rehearsal, they cheered when I used it. A smiling singer told me it was nice to hear me speaking Japanese. They were so welcoming, and patient- a very kind, dedicated, and hard working group. Much like the Trumansburg Community Chorus!
As we left the room, I took off the bright blue slippers I was required to wear, put them on the shelf with all the other bright blue slippers, found my huge shoes lined up admid the smaller ones and thought to myself- "How great is this?"

A word about Japanese singers. Singing in English is hard for them. It's not like native English speakers singing in Italian, or Latin or Spanish...some of the sounds we use in English are just not used at all in Japanese. They don't use "L", or what I call the "ugly American R" or- (and this is the trickiest one) "Th." On Saturday evening, there were times when it was hard to tell they were singing in English AT ALL. Their vowels are even slightly different. Wow. I have my work cut out for me. But I only get about a year- or at most a once a month rehearsal until June to work with them on it. We were fixated on notes and rhythms, unfortunately.

"Our faces are different, but our hearts are the same." I love that. Thanks Yoko.