My daughter and I attended a performance of Mahler's first symphony where we ran into a friend in the orchestra. Our friend, who knew my daughter once sang in a girl's choir, asked if she would be interested in an upcoming production of Mahler's Eighth. It required a rather large adult choir and a separate children's choir. Now, my daughter was longing to sing, so she signed up and waited for the rehearsals to begin. Once they did, I drove my daughter back and forth across town twice a week to the church were the children practiced. But it wasn't until the last rehearsal of the children's choir that it occurred to me that I might have been taking some pictures of this process. For, it is truly an amazing thing.

I started out with the idea of photographing my eleven year old daughter rehearsing with the Seattle Boys Choir - another amazing thing. Apparently, no other children were willing to sign up for the project, and over the course of many weeks I had developed a healthy respect for Joseph Crnko, the director whose aplomb, facility and sheer charisma had managed to not only keep my daughter from bolting when she finally realized the 'awful truth' (that she was going to be the only girl), but had managed to teach her one very difficult piece of music in a shockingly short period of time.  I wanted photos of Joe and the children that I could pull out years from now.

Unfortunately, the first rehearsal I showed up for was the last the children would do alone. And it was also the one at which the conductor, Geoffrey Simon, would direct in order to see how they were doing. So, I didn't get all the pictures I had in mind. But I got others. The next night was the first full rehearsal with the entire symphony, full choir and all the soloists. If I'd had half a brain, I'd have taken my camera along to that one to. Only, I'm not sure it would have made any difference. I had never been to anything like this before and was so blown away at that first rehearsal that I pretty much stood there the entire time awestruck.

By the next night, however, I had recovered and came prepared with the some high-speed pro film my widest aperture lens. I wasn't sure what the etiquette on picture taking was at rehearsals, but I figured that as long as I stuck with discretion and natural light I would probably be all right. I continued taking pictures through the last three rehearsals up to the day of the performance.

So here they are, or what's worth scanning. They turned out a grainy when I blow them up very far. But that's what you expect with film like this. There were many shots I would loved to have gotten, but I was too paranoid about distracting anyone to get close enough.

A review
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Most of the pictures are linked to larger ones if you click on them.
The ones with an adjacent link "(big)" are linked to an even bigger one for those of you with the interest, or at least the bandwidth.

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