'Grace Notes'
“What a world! What a world!!” cried the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz as she was melting away. The credit crisis that has come to the center of our attention of late, has brought those words to my mind several times. My thoughts have also led me to the questions, “What is the value of a dollar?” and “What gives anything value?”
Discovering the answers to these and other important questions is part of the challenge of the journey of each of our lives. Poets and pundits , professors and preachers, people past and present offer the thoughts and ideas their experiences have given them. Some of those thoughts and ideas are remarkably similar even though they come from people of different times and places.
Abraham Lincoln said, “It’s not the years in your life but the life in your years that matters.”
In her song, Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell says, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
Certainly two people from different times and places but two bits of wisdom that help us in our search for answers.
Sometimes I wonder why sports arenas are filled to capacity and concert halls frequently struggle to fill the seats. Is it partly because we only value that with which we are familiar? What do you think?
St. Charles Singers and her family of friends value music and specifically choral music. It is a deep rooted value that began when we heard or sang in our first choir. It grew as we experienced the beauty, power, poignancy, joy and awe inspiring sounds of great choirs large and small. It has blossomed into a most valued commodity.
For twenty five years, St. Charles Singers and her loyal family of patrons have lived up to the mission of the choir: to perform, promote and preserve the finest choral music. We are truly grateful for the gifts of time and money that have enabled us to reach this milestone. Our vision for the future is to realize sold out performances at every concert and to be named as one of the top ten reasons that people of the Fox Valley and all of greater Chicago are proud to call this area home.
If you value choral music and specifically St. Charles Singers, please join us in making this vision a reality by attending as many of our concerts as you can this year. We promise many musical treasures this special season. Join us in the pleasure of sharing this most unique art form with new friends by bringing someone who may have not been to a choir concert for a very long time or ever! Together we can make sure that St. Charles Singers not only survives but thrives for another twenty five years!
