A Night at the Chorale

From our holiday performance tonight. I stood in the first line right behind the orchestra and I was able to sneak in a few shots at the end. Doesn’t this look like a glorious thing to do? Oh I wish you all could have heard it. This is one of the better things humanity can do.  Yay us!

Thank you Grace Church!  (And thank you James Renwick for designing this place.) (And while I’m at it, thank you, composers! And orchestra and John and fellow singers!)

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Stacy Horn

I've written six non-fiction books, the most recent is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

View all posts by Stacy Horn →

6 thoughts on “A Night at the Chorale

  1. Stacy, the whole setting looks exquisite, and I wish I could have been there.

    You know, I’ve hesitated to say this, but it occurs to me that you are a rather unusual sort of atheist, if you don’t mind me mentioning it. One can find atheists as diverse as Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bertrand Russell. Yet none of their main actiities centered around involvement with a church.

    While you’re thanking everyone, you might give a mild shout-out to Christianity, without which neither Grace Church nor any others would have existed — even if it’s more or less in simply a cultural sense…

  2. Thank you! And Greg, I actually do thank organized religion in this proposal I’m working on about singing.

  3. Oh, the picture is so beautiful.

    I don’t know anything about your religious beliefs (and I’m really not the type of person who cares) but I get such a sense (from you) of wonder and gratitude for life and an appreciation of beautiful things that I can’t help thinking you have faith of some kind. Even if it’s not in a God.

    I’m expressing myself poorly. Mainly what I meant was, thanks for the picture, and I’m glad you had fun singing. It is a beautiful thing, to be sure.

  4. So much of the best choral music was written under some sort of patronage system to be sung in and/or for churches. That’s the most miraculous thing for me, as an agnostic of sorts. Thanks for posting the picture – it conveys two things: how *lovely* that space is, and what it’s like to be there in the midst of the musician.

    Hope your IBD cat’s continuing to improve.

  5. I have to take him in the be weighed because I don’t think he’s gaining weight as he should. He’s eating well though.

    And thanks CR. I’m agnostic, with an appreciation of all gifts, accidental or otherwise.

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