-by the Kabob

Recently, I joined a community choir in my town. I haven't sung with a choir in years, and I thought it would be a nice way to get to know people in my community and to brush up my classical sight-reading skills. I showed up to the first few rehearsals bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Sweet-sounding Rutter hymns? Count me in! Handel's "Messiah"? Can do! "Nun Danket Alle Gott"? Sure! Sounds like fun!

Medleys?

Blink, blink.

Three of them?

In one concert?

Shit.

My choir conductor in high school was an actress who had learned to conduct for job security. It was much more marketable for a performing arts teacher to be both a drama teacher and a choir instructor, and it was clear that this woman had pulled those skills under her belt to secure herself a comfy position at a high school. She showed up to rehearsals with wan blonde feathered hair and leather flats that looked like black and white theater masks. From her attire, we choral singers knew where her allegiances lay.

This woman was fond of the medley. You could tell that the words "jazz choir" put a little kick in her step, and she wasn't afraid of the most terrifying form of medley – the musical theater medley. I remember all too well one Andrew Lloyd Webber medley we performed my senior year. My brilliant teacher had us perform choreography like jazz squares, sunshine hands, and choo-choo train shuffles as we sang hits from "Cats", "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Jesus Christ Superstar". Oh, and let us not forget the roller derby musical – "Starlight Express". There were dozens of mind-numbingly schmaltzy solos. I think some portion of the performance involved us doing sign language in white gloves with a black light. I kid you not.

But I digress.

If you aren't familiar with the medley, they all follow the same formula. Medleys start with a cute tinkly accompaniment that foreshadows the first song in the piece. The starting song in the medley is the toe-tapper; it's the song that makes the uninitiated listener think, "Hey, I know this! This is going to be fun!" The singers can start out in unison and then toss the melody from voice part to voice part like a hot potato, while the basses do some jolly yet insipid form of percussion underneath. Sing, sing, SING! Oom-pah-pah! Oom-pah-pah!

The medley takes you through a verse or two of the first song and then starts to play the accompaniment of the second song cleverly underneath the first. I'm sure the idea is to have the audience nod approvingly as the choir deftly moves into the next song. The second song pulls the medley back – there can be a solo in here, sung by a pre-pubescent sounding soprano if it's a high school choir or a warbling Julia Child if a community choir is performing the piece. The other voice parts sing a hushed "Oooooo... Ooooo... Ooooo..." as the soloist stumbles through their part.

Before the choir moves into the next songlet, the medley does what is a pre-requisite for any medley worth its salt. It modulates. It moves up a key higher, as if to say, "Dude, check us out!" If there's piano accompaniment, the choir has a 40% chance of doing this successfully. If the choir is doing this a cappella, the choir will go flat, creating a delicious dissonance when the piano returns to the scene. The third song will incorporate elements from the first few: toe-tapping tunes, insipid bass lines, and occasionally ill-placed solos.

The medley will modulate at least one more time until moving into its grand finale. By this point, the piece has modulated so many times that the sopranos are screaming at the top of their lungs as the other parts hmmm and oom-pah-pah underneath them. There might be a descant part for our more piccolo-voiced sopranos, and the rest of the choir hopes to God that the medley provides these particular sopranos accompaniment to drown them out as they sing it. As the piece comes in to the home stretch, the audience is met with corny, rhapsodic ritards and soprano notes that could make a dog's ears bleed.

Ta-da. That is the medley.

Grandparents love the medley and sing along when they can. Elementary school mom and dads videotape the medley with reverence. I have always hated medleys. The campiness. The bite-sized snippets. The marketable veneer. The – jazz hands.

Who writes these things? Aging women who lose pencils in their buns. Men in crisp bowties who fondle their conducting batons in a slightly unsavory way. Church choir conductors who are trying to preach the good book's word through singing – singing is a prayer sung twice, or so the guitar-wielding nuns told me in elementary school. The musical theater rejects. The campy jingle writers. The elderly glee club enthusiast. Perky musicians who maintain "love my mom and apple pie" cheerfulness in their writing.

Sadists, all of them.

When I learned that my choir was doing three of these loathsome compositions this November, I winced. The concert is happening on the weekend closest to Veterans' Day, and my conductor decided to incorporate two of the cheesiest patriotic medleys I've ever performed into our program. She tells us: The kids will like it! The adults will remember these old tunes and sing along! To add insult to injury, she's also included a giant medley of South American Christmas-themed lullabies. Imagine South American Christmas-themed lullabies sung by a lumbering geriatric choir in New England.

Shudder.

So when my friends ask if they can see me sing in a concert this year, I'll tell them that they can come to the one in December. It pains me this much to expose my friends to the monster that is the medley.

Cole Porter is on the agenda for the spring.

Please pray for full pieces.