The Silken Tent

One of the things I keep hearing at SFGC is how many important friendships are made through the Chorus. Having just completed an online survey of our alumnae, we hear again and again about lifelong friendships and instant connections former choristers make with each other as grown women, because of their shared experiences with the Girls Chorus. I would have to agree, there’s nothing like music to bond you with others for life, even if you lose touch for decades.

 

This has been an interesting leit motif for me this fall. In August I reconnected with a dear friend and shared a wine country weekend reliving many of the musical adventures we had undertaken together in our work with Midori in the early 90s. And last month I had a surprise visit from a friend I have known for almost 30 years. We sang together in concert chorale at college in the Central Valley and remained close friends during the years we both lived in New York, discovering and inventing our adult selves along with a core group of musical friends (sounds like a tv show, doesn’t it?). Since then, this friend has become a successful consultant in the corporate world, but he misses music, and he came to talk to me about his ideas for changing his life, and the world, by helping kids around the globe learn from each other through music.

 

Then last week, jazz violinist Regina Carter was in the Bay Area giving several concerts. I had the privilege of working with her and becoming her friend during my days at San Francisco Performances. On Thursday I met Regina for dinner and learned that she too is thinking about taking an active role in getting inner city and rural African kids together to make music. Sounds like there’s another connection, and another theme here for sure.

 

And finally, on Friday I got a very formal engraved invitation to a reception in honor of a conductor with whom I had worked in New York almost 20 years ago. He is about to be made a Chevalier de l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres – a knight of the French government for his contributions to music. I hadn’t heard from him in years, but back in the day, he started a French opera company while still a grad student, and I helped the cause by sending fliers, writing fundraising letters, making food for receptions, and sewing costumes, in addition to singing in the chorus. Talk about putting on a show in a barn! But it was all a wonderful, life changing experience. Maybe our girls will sing for him someday at the SF Opera, or abroad...

 

That’s the thing about old friends and music – it’s a strong, beautiful and resilient tie that binds. “But strictly held by none is loosely bound/By countless silken ties of love and thought/To everything on earth the compass round.” Robert Frost, The Silken Tent