Every theatre has a green room — a place to relax, connect, and be yourself before the show. This is mine. I'll be writing about singing, performance, wellbeing, and life behind the scenes. I hope you'll enjoy it.
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When people hear the word "choir," they usually picture rows of singers all blending into one big sound. That's a wonderful thing, and it's exactly what some of my other groups do beautifully. TheatreSong Collective was built to be something else. It's a place where the group sound matters, and so does the individual voice within it.
It is, without question, the question I get asked most often by singers who want to understand how it all works.
People often ask me what a musical director actually does. And I understand the question, because from where the audience sits, the hard work is invisible by design. You arrive, you settle into your seat, the music begins, and if everything has gone well, it feels effortless. Natural. Almost inevitable.
It isn't.
There is a moment, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes after the curtain call, when the adrenaline begins to subside, and something else rushes in to take its place. It is not quite calm. It is not quite exhaustion. It is something more interesting than either of those things.
Picture this. You've been thinking about coming for a while. A friend mentioned it. You saw something on Facebook. Or perhaps you've simply been curious, the kind of quietly curious that sits in the back of your mind, never quite loud enough to make you act. And now you're here, reading this, wondering whether a live choral concert is for you.
It is. I promise you, it is.
What Regular Choir Singing Does for Your Body, Mind, and Soul, Even If You've Never Had a Lesson
You don't need to be a professional to feel the full force of what singing can do for you. In fact, for amateur singers, people who sing simply because they love it, the benefits can be even more profound. Here's what the science says, and what I see every single week in my rehearsal rooms.
Let me tell you about Margaret.
She's been standing outside the door of my rehearsal room, metaphorically speaking, for about three years. She loves music — always has. She sings along to the radio when nobody's listening. She went to a choir concert a while back and sat in the audience feeling something she couldn't quite name: a pull, a longing, a quiet little voice saying 'I wish that were me.' And then, on the drive home, a louder voice drowning it out: 'Don't be ridiculous. You're not a singer.'
Maybe you know Margaret. Maybe you are Margaret.
This post is for her. And for you.
