Back to School!

The Chorus School and rehearsals have started up again for the 2009-2010 season. This week we will have successive “Back to Chorus” nights for all our families on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. The big news is that our East Bay program has moved to the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley, which is the fulfillment of one of many desires and dreams for the Chorus.

 

The Crowden Music Center is a K-8 school that emphasizes the serious study of music at the core of its curriculum. It is a lovely, warm and welcoming environment for our program, and we hope that many more East Bay families will be able to find their way to this new venue for us in Berkeley. Located on the corner of Sacramento and Rose Streets, Crowden is also just three blocks from the North Berkeley BART station, and a short walk to the mini gourmet ghetto at Monterey and Hopkins – an additional perk for faculty and staff.

 

This is also the time of the most beautiful weather in the Bay Area, I think. I love walking to the office in the morning in sunshine(!), and still having a long twilight to go home by. There’s something about the slant of light on early autumn afternoons, (with apologies to Emily Dickinson), that is anything but oppressive. Up in Lake County, it’s the busy time of the pear and grape harvest and crush, but I find it a reflective time as well. There’s much to organize and plan for in the months ahead, but that slant of light in the afternoons makes me pause and take note of this one moment in time that seems to transcend all time. 

 

Powerful music from any era has that same timeless quality. We are part of an ancient tradition of harvest and homecoming, of singing and celebrating the riches of the earth. This ties into two important themes and projects at the Chorus this fall – our October concerts, “Transcendent Voices,” that will feature musical settings of timeless texts by poets and prophets, and the release of our newest recording, “Heaven and Earth,” that we hope to have available by late October as well. It should be a beautiful and bountiful harvest.