This blogpost is from Sandy Siegel Miller, our amazing uber-volunteer and #1 cheerleader, with photos by Hyde Park Chorus Master Joy Rosner:   

I arrived at Thursday’s Snowbird Day with the first verse of Psalm 100 on my mind: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands!”  Psalms!  At 8:30 in the morning!  Who would have thought?  Encore, as we all know, is a secular organization.  But I’m a postulant—on the journey to perhaps become a Deacon in the Episcopal Church in the near future.  So having a Psalm or two on my mind once in a while is to be expected, I suppose.  And why wouldn’t I be thinking about joyful noise?  After all, it was Snowbird Day!

For those of you who haven’t yet joined us for Snowbird Day (or its fall equivalent, Tune-Up Day), it’s a day-long rehearsal, originally designed for our singers who travel south and ride out the worst of winter in warmer climes, returning in the spring and wanting to catch up on the Spring Encore repertoire so that they can perform with us at the concerts in May.  So we have a day of sectionals and full-choir rehearsal, beginning with coffee, scones, muffins and fruit, and breaking in the middle to catch our breath and enjoy some lunch.  It’s a day full of music—lots of noise, for sure!  And of the 120 people who joined us yesterday, I think we actually did have about a dozen “real” snowbirds.  The rest of us came because we knew it would be fun!

As the day began and everyone gathered around the tables to fill their plates, I was aware of another kind of joyful noise. No one was singing yet (well, maybe Jonathan – he is pretty much singing or humming all the time!), so it wasn’t music that I heard.  It was the sound of people greeting each other: exclamations of reunion, bursts of laughter, and eager conversations. It was the song of friendship, the hum of meaningful connection and shared happiness.  Joyful noise, indeed!

When Jonathan and I dreamed of starting Encore Illinois, we mostly thought about creating a way to bring people together to make music—to make a choir that was open to absolutely anyone—one that, with a little hard work, a lot of commitment, and a little bit of magic, could put on a performance that we can be proud of. It has been incredible to see that happen.  We’ve made some mighty good music!  And without realizing it, we also made something else—something that’s at least as important as good singing.  Encore has brought people together and created meaningful relationships.  Encore has become a community, one that for some of us feels like “family.” There is something magical about singing together; we’re all hearing about the emotional and physical health benefits of singing in a choir.  No doubt, some of it is the creation of sound waves and vibrations together; sit back and listen to 100 people singing a chord, and you’ll know what I mean.  And some of the health benefits, I think, are also about the vibration of human connection:  the sense of belonging, the awareness that we enrich each other’s lives when we share experiences.

We made good music yesterday.  And we certainly made a lot of noise!  But maybe most importantly, we made joy.