Angela Healy
When I started college at NYU, I was living at home and commuting an hour on the subway each way. My wise mother, wanting her shy daughter to build a community and make friends, said ‘join something. Try the chorus.” I did, and our first concert was the Faure Requiem at Carnegie Hall. I was hooked forever.
Medical School and residency made choral singing impossible. The morning after my last night on call as a resident (1981) I took out a phone book and auditioned for the first chorus that answered the phone. It was the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. I sang with them for three years – my personal highlight was Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.
After moving to Massachusetts, work and four children interrupted my choral involvement, this time for fifteen years. In 2001 I joined Masterworks; I learned about them from my voice teacher, Robert Gartside. I learned I had been accepted to MWC on September 10, 2001.
The next day, after absorbing the shock of the day’s events (9/11) and making sure my New York family was safe, I got a call that the rehearsal would be optional, and we sang the Mozart Requiem straight through. We sang through our tears. Cathartic doesn’t begin to describe how that felt.
One morning after another concert in November, my mother, another choral singer, called me. “So. Did you sleep?” “No’” I said. “Not a wink!” This is how I feel after concerts – it’s the best high there is.
For the past 20 seasons, choral singing with Masterworks has been my joy and my therapy. Every Tuesday night for 2 ½ hours, all I think about is the notes. On concert days I forget everything except being caught up in the music with all these other people: singers, orchestras, audience. I feel absolutely ‘present’.
