A few weeks ago, Tim Sharp, in his weekly Blog post, wrote of what is truly important. He spoke of a leather satchel he inherited from his mentor and what it means to him. I read and enjoyed that post as I do most of his, and filed it away in my mind.
My idea for this week's blog was to talk about my first rehearsal of the concert cycle and, while it is what I'm going to do, it will be in a different direction from the way it would have been.
This concert cycle seemed to fall in place at the last moment---I accepted into my ensemble a wonderful tenor last week and was confident with the rest of my singers for a change. The day of the rehearsal was bright and summer-y and it seems everything was going my way. About ten minutes before rehearsal began, I received a call from one of my basses. He told me he had to work overtime and wouldn't be able to make it that day but........that was not why he was calling. He told me my other bass had left him a message---he had had a heart attack. The good news is....W actually left him a message, so that means he wasn't in the CICU. The bad news is, he had a heart attack.
My first thought was....what will I do with only one bass? Then I snapped out of it....this person/singer I admire and count on is ill.....what I can do to make it better for him?
We work with people and we have to think about them as people, not only as parts of our whole, but people, first and last. I will do what I can to help him....he can either sing with us for this concert cycle or next, when he feels better but.....I will listen to him. I will try to think about him and not just my choir. In the last day or so, several of my singers have contacted me to find out how he's doing, so I will call his wife to check up on him later today.
In my rush to have everything qued up for our concert cycles, at times I forget about the people part of our work. W's heart attack was a wake-up call for me as well as W.... I will try to do better and be a person working with people. I now know what is important.
