Mediocre. I mean, they even called ME as the choir director for a time! They're desperate to have a choir because the church requires it, even though very few people are interested in having to go to yet another meeting (practice) with everything else we have to do. (I should have put that in the past tense.)
I was in a Temple choir once for a dedication. We rehearsed for over a year. Our director was stellar and it was very tough, several times I wanted to quit. However, we all stuck it out, and I think we sounded very nice. At least GBH said we sounded good. (Poor man, I had to stand right behind his chair for some of the songs. I am not the best singer by far.)
In the ward I grew up in, the ward choir was very good but then there were many members of that choir who were also in the Tab Choir. Their leader was Lowell Durham. Here is his obit so you can get an idea of who he was:
my first ward's choir had a college music teacher as the choir director.......he left (inactive) after a few months.
one of the TBM women in my last ward's choir was a very good singer, properly voice trained, could have done something professionally if she hadnt been a SAHM. she oputshone everyone else in the choir and, as a result, it was very unbalanced...... when they got her to do a solo though, it was pretty good
Yes, the ward I was in had a good choir. The director was a pianist and she took it seriously. Her son was a pianist who would play for the choir. We had a lovely Christmas presentation every year. It's one of the things I miss from church. ( we now live 5 hrs away from there so I can't just go to that event as a member of the community.)
We always had good choir directors, most of them were musically talented. But since anyone could be in the choir, the end result was mediocre. It pretty much sounded like a group of people getting together to sing hymns. (which is what it was)
...out of curiosity and for the sake of research for my literary project. The ward covers MIT, South Cambridge up to Harvard University and the Harvard "B" School in Allston (part of Boston). So it's a very upscale and educated ward.
Behind a closed door, I heard a female ensemble of maybe 10 voices rehearsing Spofford's great PROTESTANT hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul." I found that choice of music quite interesting.
And they were quite good. I lingered and listened (and enjoyed) for a couple of stanzas. I was disappointed it was not performed during sacrament meeting.
The one I sang in as a teen was pretty good. Our choir master was a music teacher with a master degree in music. I couldn't read music but could carry a tune pretty well and sing harmony. Luckily he never made us sing "If You Could Hie to Kolob" or "We Thank Thee O God For a Profit"....that would have given me gas...or worse...I was there 'cause I liked to sing.
In my ward choir when I was a teenager, the bishop's wife stormed out of practice because she wasn't chosen for the solo! Hahaha!! (sorry... a little off subject maybe.) She was a show off and I never liked her. She once cornered me in Relief Society and demanded that I go play the piano for an elderly widow in the ward with whom I was not acquainted in the slightest. I told the bishop's wife I would think about it, and she just sat there and looked at me with a blank stare. She finally said, "You NEED to do it. You NEED to." I was just like, "....okay???" Aaaaand the bishop's wife never talked to me again. LoL. Lots of weirdness.
Mid to late 70's time frame- Big Cottonwood 10th ward. Like Gentile's ward mentioned above, we had several members of the Mo-Tab choir in our ward as well. With a fair amount of talent and a lot of real commitment it was amazing what the Ward choir could do. Of course "correlation" killed things like budgets and ergo, the choir. By the mid 80's they were actually calling people to be in the choir just trying to keep it alive. Rather than a thriving, dynamic thing it was just one more chore that had to be checked off the never ending list.
I have not heard a good, well disciplined and practiced ward choir in the past two decades.
After I grew up and went to a Lutheran university, I got a kick out of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" being included in the LDS hymnal with only one stanza. As if--oh no! they can't believe the other stanzas, just the one.
I was in Houston a few years back and visited a ward there. They had the WORST Choir on the face of the earth bar none. Everyone in the choir was on a different note, a different word and I think a different song. Plus the choir director had a stick in each hand and he was flapping his arms for all he was worth. His arm flapping was about twice the speed of the piano.
I understand this ward was meeting in the first chapel that was built in Houston.
I heard one choir that sounded like it was made up of the rejects who failed at singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" at Wrigley Field....painful....made my teeth hurt!
The ward choir here has 3 former mo-tab members and 2 others that have been professional performers. They're still not that great. They sound very unbalanced since there are also a dozen adults that are tone-deaf and half a dozen kids.
In 1967-1970 I directed the University Ward choir in Eugene, OR. It was an exceptional choir because 1) University ward with lots of capable singers 2) I had a master's in choral music. It didn't hurt that Jerrold and Joanne Ottley were in my choir. My only claim to fame! This was only a couple of years before Jerry Ottley became the tab choir director.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2014 07:06PM by billdorgan.
My Mom was an accomplished piano and organ player, and when she directed our ward choir it was pretty decent.
Ironically, I can't sing to save my life but having grown up TBM and under my Mom's influence, I can read music, conduct music and fake sing so of course I was called as choir director in my small, struggling East Coast ward when we first moved out here. (I was also Primary President, RS Spiritual Living Teacher, Primary chorister, and my newly wed spouse was in the Bishopric. We drank the Koolaid until it was coming out our ears). Back to the topic at hand--our choir sucked!!
On a related note, after I joined the Catholic church I was ostracized by all my family except my Mom. She defended me by saying family comes before religion-- a totally revolutionary concept in my circles.
After her death, I found out that for the last several years of her life, she had quietly spent her Sunday afternoons playing the organ and piano for the Roman Catholic Mass in downtown SLC. If you have ever attended a Mass, you know the organ and piano music can play a role second only to the Priest's role, and it takes a tremendous amount of musical knowledge and skill to appropriately accompany the liturgy.
She was so deep in TBM-ness and manipulated by my Dad and guilt that I'm sure she felt she couldn't get out, but I always felt that this was her way to quietly rebel and share a life with me. I now sing in our Catholic parish choir, and always feel her with me when the organ music begins to swell!
My DW was the choir director in our small town ward for years and years. There were 8 - 12 of us and we did some incredibly difficult pieces. There was a lot of talent in those folks. We once even did the messiah one sacrament meeting. Our two pianists were concert pianists and made some beautiful music. I miss all of those guys. It was the most fun I had at church.
It is actually the only thing I truly miss.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2014 09:01AM by icanseethelight.
Best one I ever heard was University ward, Bloomington IN. Many of the members are professors or students in the opera dept at IU and the director is a dean emeritus at the school.
It is one ward choir that you have to have some serious chops and have to audition to get into. They also make all the hymns in SM awesome because they choose from the lesser known hymns based on their artistic merit rather than "everyone knows this one"
They join with the stake to put on the messiah each holiday season but I could not get tickets.