Choir

I’ve been a member of a choir from age ten to seventeen; I joined a boys and girls choir for the first five years and after that I joined a high school choir. Since I graduated from high school, I’ve not practiced singing except for Karaoke. I didn’t evaluate myself as a good singer so I’d never dreamed of going to a music school however on the other hand, still now, I always say I like singing songs. I think that the choir has influenced me a lot, forming my personality for example I don’t hesitate to speak to people when I first meet them because I had many chances to meet new people during choir practice. The boys and girls choir has held a concert with international choirs from Bulgaria, Hungary or Austria annually to promote international exchange. Actually it was obvious to anybody that the quality of their music was much better than ours because they could come to Japan based on their music skills; still we enjoyed singing together. Of course I didn’t speak any English or other languages at that time however I felt that music didn’t need translation it is an international common thing, I enjoyed singing with them and learning how to communicate with people without a particular knowledge of the language.

When I was a high school student, we had a concert with our twin city’s high school choir from America. An American girl asked me my address and we started to exchange mails, she was my first foreign friend and this was the first step for me to study English for communication with a friend, not for getting good marks in the exam at school.
Choir has brought me many good opportunities, friends and pleasure and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to join it again. Quite recently I heard that my Japanese friend who was a music teacher in Japan joined a choir in Manchester so I asked her about it. She told me that anyone can join it although it might be impossible for a beginner or someone who can’t read scores because some university students whose major’s are music also join it and the level of the choir is sometimes too high for them. I haven’t practiced singing the songs for a long time however I’m not a beginner and I can read scores, I also checked the web site and it says “anyone is welcome” so I decided “why not give it a try?”

The registration started at 6:00pm and the first practice was scheduled from 7:00pm on the same day. I thought many people would come for the registration at around 6:50pm so they could join the practice straight away. In case many people came to register, I went there around 6:10pm which I thought was early enough however when I arrived, there was a long queue and my membership number was 235! I was amazed to find out that so many people came to join the choir after it had been full one week.
At 7:00pm the practice started, and soon I understood what my friend mentioned about the choir. It wasn’t suitable for a beginner, in fact many of them have already known the score and they sang at sight. I was half panicked, I was careful not to miss what the conductor told us, to read English lyrics which are not familiar words to me and to sing from the scores. On the first lesson, I was nervous and didn’t enjoy singing which was not what I expected from the choir. After the lesson I bought a music CD of the song and practiced it at home ready for the second practice day. It helped me a lot at least I could relax and follow the practice and gradually enjoy singing. During the rehearsals I’m concentrating on singing and don’t have spare time to make friends, but I hope to have friends there soon.