Late this afternoon I'm heading to South Bend for my final rehearsal with Vesper Chorale, a semi professional group that I've sung with for three years. I really don't want it to be my "last" rehearsal with them, but the drive to South Bend every week is prohibitive for me and I must let go. Humm...letting to...something I've struggled with all of my life. Someone once said that learning how to say goodbye is one lesson we all need to learn. Well, here's another chance for me to learn to say goodbye. Hopefully I'll get it right.

On Thursday evening we are singing the Holcaust Cantata for the Indiana Chorale Director's Convention in Indianapolis. The Holocaust Cantata is a group of songs written by prisoners while they were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. While all of the pieces are heartrending, full of suffering and the horror of the concentration camps, there is one piece in particular that breaks my heart every time I hear it. It is a baritone solo and Vesper has a baritone with a voice that takes your breath away. Good grief this man can sing.....and when he sings this piece, all four of us sopranos in the row I'm in wipe our collective eyes. The title of the piece is "The Train".

Already rolling, puffing and blowing, already hearing the clatter taking her away. Eyes last meet gazing, hands gesture, waving, unspoken silent sorrow.
Running still beside the train in fool's futility, farewell my love! Remember me!

Goodbye to eyes that once caressed me, farewell to love - that owned my heart,
The dark hour's on us, our fate is sealed, I must forget you, farewell my love.

My daughter Sarah was with me the last time we rehearsed. She sat in the church and listened while Wishart directed us through the musical numbers in the cantata; pausing throughout to correct our phrasing, intonation, vocal placement, dynamics, prononciation (there really is a lot to think about and do to sing well). When we left she was very quiet.....didn't say much at all on the ride back to Roanoke accept to comment on the darkness of the cantata, the quality of singers in Vesper (many of whom she had heard before in previous concerts) and the power of the music. My only comment to her was that sometimes we have to revisit history so that we might remember and reflect and that perhaps by remembering and reflecting on the past, we won't make the same mistakes in the future. That is one of the elements of power in a piece like this - that we would remember and in remembering, look to the future with more determination to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Vesper performed the Holocaust Cantata to 350 people in South Bend last November. They are performing it again in November of 2009. In Fort Wayne, a group called Heartland Chamber Chorale performed this piece at First Wayne Street United Methodist Church in downtown Fort Wayne for a couple of years in a row. If they do it again this coming season, I hope that you can take the time to go and listen to this powerful music so that we all will remember.

I'm sad this afternoon.....I don't want to say goodbye, but I pray that God has something really good in store for me as I end this dearly loved part of my life and leave some people who have touched my heart through their friendship, kindness and the music we have created together. Goodbyes are so hard. And sometimes I feel like I've had to say too many goodbyes......but we all have, haven't we? Let us all live in the hope of Jesus Christ; today, tomorrow, forever and count on Him for our future.

See you all soon. Peace, Kathy