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Personal Journey

The soulful joy of sharing music

BY PATRICIA GILMORE

Every Tuesday evening for the past 24 years, I have met Margaret Zamorano in room 1325 of Schoenberg Hall. She has been going to that room for 25 years and is the only charter member still singing with the University Campus Choir.

Together we have raised our voices with five conductors and scores of singers who have come and gone through that quarter-century of Brahms and Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn, Cole Porter and Copeland. Margaret and I have sung the melodies of those composers and dozens of others with linguists, lab researchers, accountants, electricians, writers, lawyers, engineers and myriad other members of UCLA’s extended family.

­­At the time, I was a doctoral student and teaching assistant in UCLA’s English Department — too busy to eat lunch, much less take on extracurricular activities. But I kept hearing about that choir, and I attended the first concert. Those singers, from fresh-faced undergrads to silver-haired retirees, glowed as they filled Schoenberg Auditorium with Purcell and Handel and American spirituals.

I wanted that delight for myself, so I signed up. As you might guess, embracing that opportunity in spite of my hectic schedule was therapeutic. Making music with others who love it truly does soothe the soul.

In addition to giving concerts every December and June, the choir has ventured away from campus to sing in several local communities and in Ireland and the Czech Republic. For many years we sang with UCLA’s Choral Union, a melding of every choir on campus. In the Choral Union holiday concerts, we surrounded the Royce Hall audience with choirs in the balconies as well as on stage. In the spring we gathered enough singers to do major works such as Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony,” Brahms’ and Verdi’s “Requiems,” Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” and Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms.”

Most important have been the singers themselves. Some of my dearest friends have come from this choir. The camaraderie of immersing ourselves in the work of learning and performing great music creates unique bonds and connections.

Sometimes we struggle greatly with difficult passages we fear we’ll never get right, or with the challenges of fund-raising so we can afford to pay our director and accompanists. Several times we have joined to bring what comfort we could to members who faced terminal illness. And we have shared the loss of those persons.

As I have moved from UCLA graduate teaching fellow to faculty member, the campus choir has proved a continual source of creativity and beauty and friendship. I look forward to this 25th anniversary season with our new conductor, Alexander Ruggieri. A musician with impressive experience, he will surely lead Margaret and me and our fellow singers into a fruitful second quarter-century.

Gilmore is a lecturer in the UCLA Writing Programs.