Choirs hold their breath
“Almost the only people who still sing together are the religious. … There is something fortifying about the act of singing together. Oral and chest cavities vibrating in rhythmic unison — which is all (congregational) singing is — creates a peculiar companionship among people who, apart from their creed, may have little else in common. You might barely know the lady in the pew next to you, but when you sing a common song or hymn together, she may as well be your auntie.”
— Baron Swaim, “Houses of Worship” column, “The Wall Street Journal,” July 3, 2020.
It’s been nearly two months now since the First Presidency released guidelines for the return to worship services. I still remember sharing some of the guidelines over the phone with an editor, who stopped me when I said the use of choirs was suspended.
He said, “What? Why are choirs suspended?”
I got a colorful answer to that question last week from Tim Sharp, executive director of the American Choral Directors Association, when the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square came up in our interview.
“They’re cheek to cheek, and Mack (Wilberg) — he’s one of my heroes — is an incredible choral director, and what we do as choral directors is we insist on great diction and great pronunciation, and that means we’re blowing spit all over the place all the time.”
I laughed while I circled that sentence in my reporter’s notebook, but of course Sharp and I both knew the dark ramifications of expelling bodily aerosols during the pandemic. In fact, Sharp and his wife are both recovering from COVID-19 infections.
Sharp had been at a choral directors conference in Salt Lake City in early March and was at another conference the following week in Spokane when the pandemic made America push pause.
“I said, ‘Guys, it’s over.’ We called it. I said, ‘We need space, physical distancing, and we can’t do that in choir situations.’”
A couple of days earlier, still unbeknownst to anyone, COVID-19 had raced through a 150-minute choir practice at a church in Mount Vernon, Washington. Ultimately, 52 of 61 choir members were infected, and two died.
“We were really devastated when we saw that reality,” Sharp said. “It just took the wind out of everyone.”
An obvious and energetic-sounding optimist, Sharp has pressed forward. The ACDA is funding studies at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University to measure the aerosol spray generated by singers and flute players and other instrumentalists.
Meanwhile, the association has issued a 109-page report with safety suggestions for choirs of all kinds, including those congregational choirs.
“A return to standard practice of singers closely positioned in a choir loft is not recommended,” the report stated.
“We’ve got to protect our seniors,” Sharp told me. |
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The advice did include virtual solutions and hybrid or blended approaches to returning to choir singing, if desired.
“I’m asking all my people to be patient,” Sharp said, encouraging them to wait for the studies, which are due July 25.
Ward choirs, stake choirs and even the Tabernacle Choir are all in the same boat: Their singing together is suspended. Meanwhile, Latter-day Saint wards and branches are all over the map. Some still aren’t holding worship services at all. Others are meeting for worship but not singing, instead using piano, organ or other instruments to provide music alone. Still others are following the First Presidency guidelines that authorize singing hymns in worship services while seated individuals or families sit physically distanced from others. Hymnbooks are not being used.
The Tabernacle Choir hasn’t performed or rehearsed together since mid-March. Wilberg and the other directors remain in touch with choir members by issuing weekly announcements.
Wilberg’s wife, Rebecca Wilberg, is a vocal coach and she includes tips and simple exercises choir members can do at home to keep their voices in shape until it is safe for them to resume rehearsals.
Sharp is grateful the Tabernacle Choir is on hiatus, too.
“Honestly, they’re so iconic,” he said, “that if Mack or the church all of a sudden threw maximum caution to the wind and said, ‘We’re going to throw caution to the wind and do it,’ my goodness, that would send an iconic signal to the rest of the world. I know how important they are in terms of just the nature of the optics of who they are.
“Personally, I don’t want choirs to become the poster child of this pandemic. I don’t want choirs to be what people point to when they say super spreader. I would hate it if people looked back on this and pointed fingers at choirs and said, ‘Look what happened.’”
Sharp and his wife are nearly fully recovered from their COVID-19 infections. Their senses of smell and taste are coming back very slowly, he said.
They also are looking ahead.
“Choirs have had more attention in the last four months than we’ve ever had in our lives, but I’m not sure where that’s going to go,” Sharp said. “In your industry, they say there’s no bad ink, so I’m going to take that approach.” |
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What I’m Reading ... Why the Supreme Court cited the Doctrine and Covenants in last week’s key religious liberty decision.
BYU added a Native American professor to its committee examining race and inequality on campus.
My wife was a high school gymnast, and we watched together as teens as Mary Lou Retton won gold medals in the 1984 Olympics. We’ve watched every Olympic gymnastics competition together ever since. We both are fans of reigning world and Olympic champion Simone Biles. ESPN published a new oral history piece about how she changed the way American gymnasts succeeded. My wife and I also have watched “Athlete A,” a Netflix documentary about gymnasts who survived years of sexual abuse by a now-imprisoned USA Gymnastics trainer. It was excellent. It is rated PG-13 because of the difficult subject matter and discussions of the abuse.
Speaking of movies, we just watched “Greyhound,” the new World War II movie starring Tom Hanks that is on Apple TV Plus. Hanks wrote the screenplay himself and with the director made some very interesting choices. They chose immense intensity over other typical character development, letting the suspenseful circumstances of three frightful days at sea do the work of revealing the character of the captain played by Hanks. I loved it.
Sister Betty Jo Nelson Jepsen, who served in the Primary general presidency from 1988 to 1994, died July 4. |
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