Quite an Opportunity to Let Their Voices Be Heard

The daunting reality sank in when we received the list of what we would need to perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall: our black folders, our vestments, our music arranged in order.

And then there was the note about the cough drops.

Bring them if we must, our choirmaster wrote, but, “Unwrap prior to going onstage, or during applause only.”

Reading those words, several of us flashed on the same horrifying possibility: surreptitiously unwrapping a lozenge, cellophane crackling during a pause in the Bach orchestral piece, esteemed white-tied musicians and the entire 2,265-seat sold-out audience ever so politely frowning.

Our choir was accustomed to the forgiving stone walls of our Gothic-style church in Pasadena. But we had been invited to sing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for two holiday concerts at Disney Hall, the Frank Gehry landmark acclaimed for having some of the finest acoustics in the world.

So we headed downtown with trepidation and plenty of unwrapped lozenges in our vestment pockets. We wore low-heeled, soft-soled shoes. Our choirmaster showed us how to cough without coughing -- mouths closed, an exercise akin to choking.

We rehearsed, again and again and again.

“Every note can be scrutinized. You can’t hide behind your instrument,” L.A. Philharmonic spokesman Adam Crane said of the hall.

“Every note has to sound completely perfect, because the audience can hear it. There is no better discipline.”

This would make a better story if we were a small rural choir thrust upon the concert stage. But, in all candor, our parish, All Saints Episcopal Church, is large and established and has committed considerable funds to its music.

James Walker, our choirmaster and music director, has devoted 14 years to building up two strong adult ensembles, the Canterbury and Coventry choirs. Together, we are now 100 strong.

We are expected to be well rehearsed yet agile enough to sight-read. On Sundays, we sing at least two anthems, frequently a cappella, and lead the congregation in seven or eight hymns. The pace is fierce. And though we are mostly volunteers, squeezing in rehearsals between jobs and families, many of us grew up with music.

My maternal grandparents, mother, aunts and two sisters all sang in Episcopal choirs. At 7, I was instructed to memorize “Silent Night” and dispatched down the aisle with the rest of the children’s choir, all in puffy, oversized white surplices. I sang through high school. So I wasn’t a novice, even though I’d let decades go by before impulsively auditioning for the Canterbury choir five years ago.

Still, the Disney Hall concerts nearly caught me and my fellow choir members off guard.

James told us in early November that our combined choirs had been asked to sing with the L.A. Phil. The two concerts fell on the same weekend that my choir already was performing a church evensong with Vivaldi’s Gloria in D Major, a rich and complex piece in Latin with orchestra. We were preparing to sing Schubert’s Mass in G Major at Christmas services.

The demands would be enormous, James cautioned. Did we really want to do it?

We did, of course.

So on the Sunday of the concerts, we still sang the Vivaldi at church, but it was wedged between the two Disney Hall concerts and three dress rehearsals. We rehearsed and sang from 8 a.m. that Saturday to 10 p.m. Sunday. We stocked up on PowerBars, bottled water and those big tablets that fizz in water and supposedly prevent colds.

The Disney Hall program was deceptively simple: a few hymns, a German carol and “Silent Night,” finishing with the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah.”

The orchestra’s assistant conductor, Alexander Mickelthwate, came to the church to rehearse with us. He was enthusiastic and engaging. He put us at ease.

Strangely, the most difficult piece would be the normally straightforward “Silent Night,” which we were to sing a cappella and pianissimo, or very quietly. Mickelthwate asked the basses with the deepest voices to sing certain notes a full octave below the other basses. They rumbled tunefully.

Sing “Silent Night” so softly, he urged us, that we could hear the basses throughout -- far more challenging than belting out Handel’s fortissimo Hallelujahs. He directed us by pressing his palm downward as if to squash unwanted sound.

The weekend began badly.

The Vivaldi dress rehearsal started that Saturday at 8 sharp. An alto who works as a school counselor received an emergency phone call at 4:45 a.m. and never got back to sleep. Another alto got only 4 1/2 hours’ sleep after overseeing her office holiday party.

When I stumbled to my locked car at 7:15, I failed to notice that a friend had thoughtfully placed my two thick folders of music in full view on the car roof. Not until Pasadena did I discover the folders were not in my car. I wince even now to imagine all those sheets of Vivaldi and Handel and Schubert -- scribbled painstakingly throughout with important penciled notations -- blanketing the lanes of the 210 Freeway.

Our identical black folders, as if bewitched, kept disappearing and reappearing all weekend. I borrowed the music of an absent fellow alto, and some of us clutched our folders and vestments as if they were life preservers as we carpooled back and forth between the church and Disney Hall.

In a brief dress rehearsal, Mickelthwate urged us to remember to sing to the audience, engaging them with music. I could barely see the empty seats beyond the orchestra. The warm wood-lined hall felt smaller from the stage, and more rounded, like being inside a wooden sphere.

We adjourned for lunch and watched the first half of the concert on a monitor in the choral room. The host and narrator for the concerts, actor-director Henry Winkler, stopped by the room to give us a pep talk.

The summons came, and we snaked in a long line through a maze of backstage rooms, our white surplices floating behind us.

We kept moving until we were onstage under glaring lights, sitting on the four long, colorful upholstered benches behind the orchestra. I could not see the audience, which felt just fine.

The roof soared above us, all warm curves of Douglas fir. During an organ solo, we felt the vibrations rise through the bare floorboards under our feet.

We got the signal to stand, and, abruptly, I felt alone. We normally sing elbow-to-elbow in crowded choir stalls; here, we were a foot or more apart.

The orchestra launched into the introductory bars of “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” We lifted off.

Some of us would remember most keenly the sense of being bathed in live sound. One soprano said she felt suspended in energy. Others were surprised at the intimate feel of the hall.

The concert went whirling by. A few of us awkwardly missed the entrance to “Joy to the World.”

Waiting for “Silent Night,” I watched my folder quivering slightly from the tension.

The lights dimmed, and a blue glow filled the hall. Far above, an unseen tenor with a rich, rounded voice sang the first verse in German, accompanied by a lute. The lights came back on as Mickelthwate motioned to the audience to sing the second verse themselves.

Now I could see the more than 2,000 children and adults who filled the hall, from the orchestra to the highest balconies. Their voices moved toward us like the sea.

The music had turned around and the audience was front and center, a community of voices inside this astonishing interior.

The lights dimmed again, and we sang to those who had just sung to us. We softly serenaded them with silvery music smooth as water.

The story of how Disney Hall almost didn’t get built is now part of Los Angeles lore, along with how people across the region rallied in time to save it. Gehry envisioned a democratic hall, a living room for the city. I only began to grasp that concept on Saturday, standing behind the L.A. Phil and hearing the audience sing to us.