I had four glorious hours of something fun. My daughter went with me over to St. Scholastica’s Mitchell Auditorum today and spent the day singing four choral pieces for the MPR Bring the Sing. Close to 200 others showed up and we were recorded perhaps for later listening along with some area choirs and then we accompanied Gaelynn Lee in the song that won her NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.
No politics, just good old singing. I sat with Duluth’s new City Councilor Gary Anderson who I’ve developed a pretty cordial relationship with. He has a great mellow voice but I chided him when I found out he isn’t currently singing with any choirs. It was a small world because he recognized one of our church’s former youth choir members who now sings with the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus. There were folks from all over who traveled to Duluth. We sounded great.
BTW – was pleased to read about Gary’s participation in the embarrassing “retreat” of our City Councilors who picked apart their missing colleague Jay Fosle. John Ramos wrote a cringe worthy description of the production in which Anderson is one of the few participants who doesn’t sound like a buzzard slurping up a dead carcass. (In one of my emails today I urged my fellow school board members to hold such a “retreat” so that we could get to know each other better. I would hope we would conduct ourselves less disgracefully than some of our City Councilors.)
The jovial Memphis bred conductor Tesfa Xzgyllayomgbaloough (some damned African name) encouraged us at one point to get out our cell phones and take pictures of the occasion to share on Facebook. I took one but then nervously looked back at my music to make sure I wasn’t making any mistakes.
Gary Anderson pulled out cell and took a selfie of the two of us. Maybe he’ll post it on Facebook. We haven’t friended ourselves so I’ll never know if he has the courage or temerity to be seen in my company online or not.
