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2/26/16

Music Director with Heart For Voices that Sing to God

Defining  the Awe of Religious Music

By  Robert R. Schwarz


Music is an inherent part of every society. The unearthly sounds
of throat-singing in Mongolia and Siberia are as important to
their cultures as Bach is to European cultures or drum-driven
song and dance are to Native American cultures. Since music
is such an important part of life, it should not be surprising
that the Bible says much about it; in fact, the longest book
in the Bible is its song book—Psalms. ( from " Got Questions.org",
a volunteer, non-denominational ministry )

                        He who sings well, prays twice . ( Saint Augustine of Hippo ) 


         
   Eighteen-year-old Tamaron Conseur is driving across a long bridge that connects San Diego to Coronado Island  in the Pacific . At the end of this 45-minute drive he will audition for the job as  music director  who leads a section of church  choir . He senses it can be a defining moment of his start-up career, and , considering his age, he is quite nervous about the outcome.
            He pulls in to the small parking lot of the Graham Memorial Presbyterian church ; it is a small church attended by many senior citizens proud of their several decades of worship tradition.  Tamaron , wearing a black suit  jacket  and green shirt, takes a  final glance in the rear view mirror, alights from  his car and heads inside.
            He walks to a small room and is greeted by the music director Vicki , a woman in her mid-sixties who, sensing Tamaron's  nervousness, immediately puts her applicant at ease with a sincere, welcoming smile.   Tamaron will remember her as a "youthful  appearing  woman with no false nature.  "   He will also remember how his nervousness now  increased because Vicki  was "so nice , " and that meant he had to please her.
            Vicki soon was at an upright piano playing two songs which Tamaron had never heard.  Standing behind her, this young man with his  baritone  voice sings both selections,  one an opera aria. Vicki then  picks up a hymnal , hands it to Tamaron, and requests that he sing a particular hymn . Not only is Tamaron completely unfamiliar with the piece but he must sing it without any accompaniment other that the one note Vicki now taps on the piano.
            Today Tamaron will tell you that by his standards he did poorly, yet Vicki offered an "encouraging word" after he had finished singing and then asked him to come back in an hour to meet the choir section .  Her  invitation brings a smile to his heart. When he returns after a turkey sandwich at a nearby outdoor café, Tamaron is introduced to 18  men , most between  the ages of 70 and  75.  This is  the choir section which Tamaron would direct if hired, and when he reflects on what they would expect from him—improve their musical accuracy, sound, and tone quality—he begins  to sweat.
            But at day's end, Vicki asks Tamaron if he'll take the position.  " I'll  do it right away!" he says.  
            Tamaron later describes this climax: " It was at this moment that I realized this isn't just a  job; it would be a  family ; it felt like home ! A place I wanted to be , a place in my life  that had been missing. "   

12 Years Later

" Taste and see the goodness of the Lord ."
                                              ( refrain   of a  hymn inspired by Psalm 34 )
           
            Tamaron—or "Tam", as he is known—is once again waiting for an audition, though this time confident of his  professional skills, which have been honed by 12 years of  directing church music.  He sits in a  darkened  church sanctuary , waiting to be ushered down to the church basement . There he will  be evaluated  for the position of music director of the St. James church in   Arlington  Heights , Illinois  .  St. James, with its more than 12,.000 parishioners and five choirs  ( three adult , one children's, and a teen choir ) has an illustrious history of  producing  semi-professional Broadway musicals in which one or more or its three priests frequently  make cameo appearances. 
As the baritone soloist at a high school
honors music festival
Tam  wants to know more about the sound quality of the sanctuary  and begins to test it by listening to his own whistling. Minutes later, he is downstairs and being introduced to one of the choirs and to the music director search committee.  The church pastor, Fr. Matt Foley, will arrive later.  In a no-nonsense business  tone , Tam  is  told,  "You have 30 minutes .  "  At that moment , he remembers the  advice given from other  music directors:  Use time effectively.      
            Tam's final test comes when he is asked to direct the  hymn, " Taste and See."  It happens to be his favorite , and it allows him to express his  core belief: We always have to sing our faith.  When the choir sings it,   Tam feels  "connected" to everyone in the room , especially the  choir members, whom  Tam perceives are enjoying this same connection. He is also feeling  what  he had felt intensely  in  that  small church room 12 years ago: I  am at  home !
            Fr. Matt has arrived ,  and he perceives that the singing has  energy unusual and  spirited . It is exactly what Tam wanted to achieve.  The priest   shares what he has just  felt with Tam , who later say during our interview, "I knew then that I really wanted the job . " 

A Music Director's Challenges and Some  Opinions about Music 

            During our recent interview in Tam's   small , task-filled  office,  he talked   openly and often candidly about work and life.   One quickly notices that  he runs  on high voltage and  welcomes meaningful conversation . He is a tad over six feet tall,  has blue eyes and dark brown hair, and wears glasses. His workday clothes were khaki pants, a necktie, and a checked dress shirt with sleeves partially rolled up .  
With new bride Natalie 
 Since his singing roles in the Lyric Opera chorus included the tragedies " Faust "  and the " Damnation of Faust, a logical question was : What in life makes him  sad  ? "People who can’t see life for the goodness and possibilities that can be,  " he replied. Hatred and homeless people also sadden  him . He tries not to read newspapers too often. As for what gives him happiness, it is his wife , Natalie,  and  three children:  Julian 7, Claire 4,   and Daniel, 15 months.  "I know it sounds sort of dorky, but I really do love coming to church on Sundays. I just love being   here with everybody and glorifying God. "   For fun, he plays a lot of basketball at a local X-Sport Fitness.  He's a Cubs and Bulls fan and has remained loyal  to the Los Angeles Lakers . And he loves to "make a good steak for the family.  "
            Tam  weighs 180 pounds, a  100 pounds less than when a high school senior.  He admits dieting was perhaps his   biggest life challenge, especially  making up his mind to say no to certain foods and realizing  he could not  be in complete in control  of his life.   It was a year of  discipline with Weight Watchers. The result: " It changed my life. I became more of a take-charge person. "
            "Music has always been a part of my life and has been at the heart of my faith and spirituality," Tam said.  He grew up in a house "always filled " with music.   "My dad was a drummer, and my sister and I were always performing different things for my father and his friends who came over. Tam's mother used to dance with a modern ballet company in Los Angeles. Tm started playing the piano at age six . "  Because music was all he knew when he started college, Tam today  advises youths who seek a career in  music —a career known to often  be  financially unrewarding—to have a backup career in mind.
       
The Eucharist Prompts His Conversion

            In 2006, Tam began attending the Catholic mass with his wife and two years later made his profession of faith after attending classes of the church's Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.  Music had  played no small role in Tam's conversion. While attending the Catholic  mass , he had been  giving  rapt attention to how its music and liturgy "had this elegant flow . "  He also had thought a lot about the church's "beautiful faith history" and how the Eucharist  seemed to be " drawing  him into a faith  I   longed to be a part of. "
        
Dad , baby Claire and son Julian 
    Asked  how people in church should listen to its music to get the most out of it, Tam said: "It's all about the text and the Word [ of God ] .  The text is the most important thing and how the music colors its words. The emotion comes from the music but the words guide us where our emotion should go. The beauty of  hymn  'Ave Maria '  helps us to deepen our relationship with the Holy Mother and to contemplate the gift which she was able to bring into this world. " Cantors, he said, can also help people  develop their faith.
            Tam wants his St. James congregation to sing wholeheartedly so they will then sing as one "communal" voice . " When that occurs, " he said with some passion,  "It's a really moving experience and helps people grow in faith. When I sing,  I try to let myself go   and let my spirit  in. " His personal favorites are the  Mozart and Verdi requiems and Bach's " Saint John Passion", whose chorus he has sung with  several times.
           
As for secular music,  Tam owns probably every album of the Beatles and  often listens to the music of " Radiohead,"  an English rock band formed in   1985.  Though he maintained that  some  secular music "doesn't have a whole lot of purpose,"  he also credited some of it as having "a deep connection to the soul. "  For example, he mentioned  the jazz of Miles Davis , "where raw emotion of the music enables one  to  feel what the musician is feeling. " 
            In discussing how  Americans since the 1960's  have radically changed their taste in popular music , Tam said that  listening to today's hit tunes is "an altogether different experience; a lot of it is pointless and repetitious  and without a meaningful message of love or loss. Some of it can be very crude. "
            Two technical questions (perhaps with  obvious answers?)  were  posed to Tam: What's  the fundamental difference in sound quality between a high school orchestra and a top professional one; and, can an orchestra play well without a conductor ?  Good orchestra sound, Tim explained, occurs when the  musicians , after years of experience, blow and bow their instruments with greatly  matured skill and when the orchestra "blends"  its music  and faithfully follows how the music score, its style  and dynamics  ( softness and loudness ) . With singers,  he said, it's a matter of how their voices have seasoned physically. "The quality of a really good singer is how  softly can he or she sing those low  notes with  the audience still able to clearly hear the text. "
           
Answering the second question, Tam explained that while the chorus must watch its director continuously,  some orchestras can play without a director if  "they're all feeling the music together."  He explained,  however, it's different with a director who knows exactly what he wants  from his orchestra, such as the late Leonard Bernstein (who composed "West Side Story") .
    
Challenges and Goals Today

            Music naturally has a prominent role in a large parish like St. James with its almost 80 ministries.  No  wonder then  that Tam's  biggest daily challenge is organizational  or, as he said,  "keeping the choirs and accompanists  informed  as to what's going on. "  Another full-time challenge he expressed this way: " Because you have various  levels of experience and talent , you don't want to squash anyone's  desire to lift his or her  voice up to God . It's not necessarily how good  each musician is;  it's working hard to find the choir's singular  voice ." He works especially hard  to help a choir  "hone its vowels " and  fine tune its sounds. "It's a difficult tight-rope act because you want them to lift up their voices to God  to make their singing a prayerful experience.   If the choir gets passionate about a song they're doing, then  you can get a sound that's from heaven. "  The director, he added,  must inspire and motivate  a choir as would the manager of a champion athletic team . 
      
      Said John Towner, a  key member of the church's music ministry: "Tam has an outstanding voice and it is a joy to listen to him sing.  He is able to demonstrate with ease different vocal examples during choir rehearsals.  One of his best attributes is his calm confidence.  Having worked with a number of music directors over the years, I know well how stressful being a  music director can be.  He has a lot of good, solid ideas to move our ministry forward . "
Tam's other goal?  " Right now, I'm living my dream. I want to help  inspire others to reach a deeper level of understanding of Christ and to deepen their faith through music.  "   He paused, then affirmed: " And I want to be a good father and husband, because at the end of it, family is the most important thing for me. "

THE END
All comments are welcome.

© 2016 Robert R. Schwarz

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