Owen is sitting in a wheelchair. He finds it incredibly hard to come for rehearsals every week. Aimee is 85, and this is her first time to the rehearsal. She came only because she had a card in her mailbox, inviting her to join the choir.
“I send these cards out every season, to a bunch of different folks, wondering how many would turn up and how many won’t, and every season I am not disappointed,” says Karen Mihalyi, the choir’s conductor and its unofficial matriarch.
The little hall in the Grace Episcopal Church is full of laughter and conversations this Wednesday, with people greeting each other on the first day of the new chorale season.
The Syracuse Community Choir has been serenading the city of Syracuse for the past 30 years. According to many of its members, it is a choir as different as can be from others and every now and then it strives to do something different.
“This year, we are going to focus on the stories of our choristers; because stories are beautiful,” says Mihalyi, as she announces to the choir that they are going to become a bigger part of the city’s StoryGrowing Project, which was launched in April this year by the Gifford Foundation.
Peter Swords, a therapist by profession and a baritone in the choir says that even though the SCC sings as a devotional choir for the Grace Episcopal Church, it focuses more on non-denominational singing to encourage health, wellness and harmony.
“You see patients of autism, new mothers, old people, homeless people, and even reformed child delinquents participating in the music. And these are the unique stories that our StoryGrowing project will focus on,” he says.
The SSC did an experimental collection of stories in the previous season, but according to Mihalyi, some of the narratives were so powerful that she knew this had to be opened to the entire choir and even further if possible.
“We have separate teen and children choirs too. I think they will benefit greatly from this,” she says.
Marco Soulo, the manager of the teen choir agrees that what helps even the teens is telling their story, which they often do through song and poetry or even straight, simple conversations.
Soulo says that most teen choir meetings are about getting to know what’s happening with them at school, at home and in their relationships. According to him, many a time these meetings have led to someone discussing their struggles with drugs, child abuse and even relationship violence. More than anything, he says, the storytelling tradition in the choir contributes to healing and allowing people to form bonds in the community.
“Really, the StoryGrowing project is just that simple,” says Jane Schmid, a young professional who is responsible for collecting and archiving the stories of the choir. Schmid’s own story talks about how she found the choir more than a year ago and fell in love with it because the openness and the belongingness moved her more deeply than anything else had in a while.
Steve Reiter, who joined the choir in 1999 as a shy chorister, today handles a part of the choir’s PR.
“It nourishes my soul,” says Reiter, who admits that sometimes he has little time for the choir between his personal life and work.
Milhalyi says that the choir’s motto is ‘Every Voice Matters’ and by that, they do mean every voice.
“For us, it isn’t about whether they can sing like a pro or not. I audition them alright, but it is up to them how high or low they want to go, as long as we are all trying to reach a higher space spiritually,” says Mihalyi.
As a conductor, it is her job to make sure that the choir is in a good place. While most chorale warmups are aimed at stretching the vocal chords, Mihalyi’s warmup entails stretching people’s imagination using a technique called tree meditation.
“Imagine you are a tree,” she says to the gathered choristers. As she progresses further into the session, she asks them to close their eyes and feel their roots going into the earth and their branches reaching up to meet the sky. She slowly asks them to ‘see’ galaxies and nebulae and to feel the sun shining on their leaves. All through this, she periodically hums a tune, expecting the choir members to hum along, either the same note or a harmonic one.
“That’s a story, isn’t it?” she asks.
With this year’s concert theme being Spirals, the choir breaks into discussion, allowing members to think and come up with songs to tell the story of whatever it is that they see as a spiral in their own lives.