UNISON - WA ACDA's Online Newsletter
Articles and news
September 10, 2011
Beauty in the bush: my journey answering some essential questions.
by Brian Mitchell, R & S Chair for HIgh School Choirs
T
hroughout the last 17 years as a choir director at Mark Morris High School I have had several great conversations with amazing directors. Many of these conversations have guided my journey as a director.
Often times the talks have left me pondering ideas for weeks on end, with questions that well up from within me, in the internal discussions and struggles for meaning in life. Sometimes a passing comment or question by a colleague sent me into a tailspin for months. These encounters forced me to look at what I was doing and either change direction and purpose or recommit with renewed passion and purpose to the course I was already on.
Those questions that lingered in me seem to clean the patina off of my goals, aspirations, and purpose in life. Here are a few of the questions and my answers to them.
The first major question/struggle for me came after attending my one and only National ACDA Conference in Los Angeles. The depth of the beauty struck me like a blow to the heart. I was moved to my core, inspired, impassioned, and simultaneously deeply saddened.
I realized over the course of those days that I had been changed forever and that my school teaching job in Longview will most likely never achieve that level of beauty and sophistication, and even if it did, not all of the time. I truly felt that my very existence depended on bathing in that deep beauty the rest of my life. So, I had to make a change, how was I going get filled to the brim with beauty, where was I going to find it for my life?
A second question arose while I was still wrestling with the first question. A fellow choir director asked me if I intended to become a fixture in my school. After his question really set in, I felt like a plane that had just stalled out, free falling through the sky. I realized I didn’t have intent in my career at all. I had reached all of the goals I set when I started teaching and I had not set new ones.
My wife and I spent two years discussing and considering moving to new jobs. From a “feed my soul/better job” perspective, we looked at communities with more supportive arts cultures and appreciation, bigger schools with more kids, more prestigious traditionally amazing programs, stronger feeder programs and more money, and countless resources and colleagues nearby. Places with more supportive parents, where kids had money to take voice lessons and could consider music as a possibility of a job some day. Places that could be more consistent year to year so I could audition my groups for a performance at a state conference.
I wanted to be in a place where that level of beauty would be easier to attain. Like a trumpet player trading in his student horn for a professional model. The goal would be for me to experience better music in my classroom every day, more beauty. So it could feed me, it was about me, and maybe even my ego.
Eventually, I realized my whole perspective had been wrong.
I had been thinking that a better choir would fill my soul, but as a conductor I needed to be thinking about feeding the members of my choir, not the other way around. I needed to fill my cup with beauty overflowing and then bring it to rehearsal and help to fill the cups in front of me.
When I really focused on answering where to find beauty, I discovered that it was everywhere; I just had to seek it. Recordings of choirs and books by conductors filled me with that same feeling of beauty I had experience at the ACDA National Conference. We invested in our house and made it more beautiful, eventually buying our dream house with inspiring views out every window. I joined choirs outside of my community that could feed my musical soul.
A friend of mine and I took over the responsibility of a local community choir where I get to sing and conduct. My wife and I took up photography and we take summer vacations to beautiful places. We collect beautiful images that help fill our cup year round.
I am not saying that the students don’t have beauty to share, to give, but as the director, I shouldn’t be looking to the ensemble for my inspiration. It has been my experience that the best moments with a choir have been when each person in the ensemble is giving; everyone’s focus is on outward expression.
In LA, the University of Helsinki’s Women’s Choir touched my heart, mostly because of the gifts that every person in that ensemble was giving away. The concept that the performers are trying to give something was a very profound thought.
Bobby McFerrin talks about this idea in an interview by Krista Tippet called Catching Song on American Public Media.
“This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of one of my concerts. Everyone has this sense of rejoicing. I don’t want them to be blown away by what I do, I want them to have this sense of real, real, joy from the depths of their being, because when you take them to that place, you open up a place where grace can come in.”
The best moments in my career have been when everyone in the room brings a full cup. Those times when I have been privy to a front row seat to the best that humanity has to offer, those transcendental experiences where we lose our sense of self, time, and space.
My job in this world is to help facilitate those moments and to draw attention to them. In a place like Longview, not many people provide those experiences. My goal as a teacher is to expose students to beauty, awaken their senses to be able to recognize it, help them to learn how to create it, and instill in them a lifelong desire to seek it out. My goals are focused towards the individual in my room, to see how far I can help them improve, to give them the tools to continue making music.
“Do I plan to become a fixture?” in short, yes. The advantage to staying in a place for a long time is that you get a chance to establish deep roots, a strong support system. You can weather storms and take on long term projects.
A missionary in the bush can’t make an impact on anyone if they don’t stay around long enough. As long the water can still flow through me to feed the crops, I want to be a fixture.
I have made the conscious choice not to pursue higher professional peaks, not to move to the “bigger and better” places in the world. I have chosen to make the biggest impact I can where I am, where I am needed. Many of my students start just above sea level, so our highest peak may not be visible from hundreds of miles away, and you might not even be able to find it on the map.
But I have to tell you that even though my house sits near the top of Mt Pleasant at only 1300 feet, it is one of the highest “peaks” around. The view is beautiful, and I feel like I am on top of the world.