My first reason for writing is to thank you. There is nothing that comes close to my Oxford Choir School experience. Tim and Mary, while I think you were thirteen years along when I joined the group last summer, your idea and the ambience and the authenticity of the Oxford Choir School was for me as innovative and fresh and scary and lovely as though it were just invented yesterday. To those in the choir who let me sing beside you, and showed me the ropes from other years, thank you for your support.
Besides the significant learning, the Oxford Choir School had a tremendous and much more pervasive impact for me than I ever would have imagined.
Early last year, I knew that I wanted to find a way to re-engage with choral singing. Like many of you, I had sung in some pretty good school choirs, and had dabbled from time to time, mostly informally in my adult life. In 1995 I sang in a Bach Cantatas series but I was fairly consumed with life, and I never saw clearly through the fog to seriously finding a way to sing in a choral group or choir. The Oxford story is amazing for me, because having done a bit of searching and found Tim and Mary in the Globe and then on the internet (not knowing who or what I was looking for), it is as though I stumbled onto something that in retrospect has been filled with both surprise and joy.
When I came to Oxford, I didn't know what my voice was, I didn't know what my range was. I had decided I couldn't read music (or didn't: I used to). Ironically, by time I arrived, I had lost even my confidence or boldness to sing, which I Iove to do.
Upon my return to Vancouver after Oxford I began re-engaging with music. Somehow, there was no barrier as far as the culture of choirs goes, and I know where I got that. Oxford! In fact, I continue to see the legacy of the Oxford experience as it dips back to and reshapes even my earlier choir experiences.
Yes, I am now singing in a great choir in Kitsilano. We are accompanied by cello, violin, organ, trumpet, and at times flute. The number of instruments varies and increases with special occasions. We have done surprisingly more Latin and medieval hymns and anthems than I expected (which I love). Tim, on Christmas Eve we had a guest conductor, Marcus Moseley, from the Good Noise Choir for a gospel piece, "Sweet, Little Jesus Child." To quote others, "It brought the house down." Thank you for that brief introduction and insight to gospel in Oxford.
Please receive my thanks for the good fellowship, the love of music and sharing of this very meaningful pleasure, and thank you especially to Tim and Mary for your vision, the relaxed and yet rigorous approach, and the very enjoyable legacy the Oxford Choir School still manifests for me.
Fondly,
FP
Besides the significant learning, the Oxford Choir School had a tremendous and much more pervasive impact for me than I ever would have imagined.
Early last year, I knew that I wanted to find a way to re-engage with choral singing. Like many of you, I had sung in some pretty good school choirs, and had dabbled from time to time, mostly informally in my adult life. In 1995 I sang in a Bach Cantatas series but I was fairly consumed with life, and I never saw clearly through the fog to seriously finding a way to sing in a choral group or choir. The Oxford story is amazing for me, because having done a bit of searching and found Tim and Mary in the Globe and then on the internet (not knowing who or what I was looking for), it is as though I stumbled onto something that in retrospect has been filled with both surprise and joy.
When I came to Oxford, I didn't know what my voice was, I didn't know what my range was. I had decided I couldn't read music (or didn't: I used to). Ironically, by time I arrived, I had lost even my confidence or boldness to sing, which I Iove to do.
Upon my return to Vancouver after Oxford I began re-engaging with music. Somehow, there was no barrier as far as the culture of choirs goes, and I know where I got that. Oxford! In fact, I continue to see the legacy of the Oxford experience as it dips back to and reshapes even my earlier choir experiences.
Yes, I am now singing in a great choir in Kitsilano. We are accompanied by cello, violin, organ, trumpet, and at times flute. The number of instruments varies and increases with special occasions. We have done surprisingly more Latin and medieval hymns and anthems than I expected (which I love). Tim, on Christmas Eve we had a guest conductor, Marcus Moseley, from the Good Noise Choir for a gospel piece, "Sweet, Little Jesus Child." To quote others, "It brought the house down." Thank you for that brief introduction and insight to gospel in Oxford.
Please receive my thanks for the good fellowship, the love of music and sharing of this very meaningful pleasure, and thank you especially to Tim and Mary for your vision, the relaxed and yet rigorous approach, and the very enjoyable legacy the Oxford Choir School still manifests for me.
Fondly,
FP