I sit on the cold gym floor looking up at the Legacy Choir students, singing the most beautiful music I have ever heard. I whisper to my friend next to me “they sound so good.” As a third grader, hearing a bunch of older kids sing together was so mesmerizing, and I thought they were so cool. Then show choir performed, and I was left speechless with the way they could sing and dance at the same time.
Little did I know, eight years later, I would be on a bus to that same gym to perform for elementary students.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved singing and dancing. As a toddler, my sister and I held “concerts” for our mom and grandma in our living room. There were always a couple of songs my sister or I hyperfixated on. So every Friday for about five years, we would sing those songs together while making up dances on the spot.
In third grade my music teacher told us we could join choir club. I got so excited for “auditions,” which were singing notes to see what voice section I was in. What I didn’t know was I couldn’t be in two clubs at once, and I was already in our Math Pentathlon group. I had a tough decision to make. I thought hard and knew that if I didn’t stay in the math club my teacher would be upset, but I really loved choir and would rather perform than compete. The next day I quit Math Pentathlon and joined the choir as a soprano.
From that day I have been in choir every year, except for 5th grade when we went to a different elective every six weeks for the year. Choir started to get serious in middle school. I had to start songs from solfege, learn those songs on words, remember the pitches we had been singing and then still remember what those words were. Seems easy until you have a couple of weeks to learn a song from start to finish and then have to go to UIL to get judged on it.
“Mia and Madi we need more altos, I am going to need you to learn their part,” my choir director said. We have five days before a concert to learn a whole new part and remember it. Up until that moment I had always been a soprano, which is the higher voice part for girls. I knew I couldn’t tell her no because that would be disrespectful. So I went home and complained to my mom like any teenager would do. Five days later my heart races, my hands go numb and I am trying to keep a steady breath. I was nervous because I knew I didn’t learn or memorize the alto part, so I sang the part I did learn.
It’s now my junior year and I have sung alto part multiple times by now. I am a second soprano and occasionally I will sing alto or alto 1. High school choir is nothing like middle school. For once I am in a room full of kids who want to be in there. We learn at a different pace and we are held at a higher standard of performance. Every third and eighth period I walk into choir knowing that no matter how my day has been going, I will be okay. I am in a safe place where it is okay to be that toddler who loves to sing and dance around.
That little girl in second grade who saw Legacy’s Choir perform is now performing for little kids in hopes that one day they will join choir.
