Chorale Connection: Alexandra Hall

It's hard to sing when you're fighting back tears, but it is so worth it!  Music seems to open a pathway to that swirling web of feelings that often I can't name. And this season, the Veterans’ Concert selections are really challenging me to push through when things rise up and threaten to cut off my sound. 

I'm a dual American/British citizen, so my relationship with patriotic music is complex. I watch my colleagues concentrate hard to resist the habits of a lifetime when singing the powerful but unusual arrangements of familiar American anthems that our artistic director, Dr Patricia Hacker, has selected. And while some find it amusing that I still have to look at the words for "America the Beautiful", none of them are struggling with "Homeland". 

Known to me as “I Vow to Thee My Country”, this song - with slightly different lyrics - is to me as British as “God Save the King.” Its stirring chords have accompanied so many signature events from my past and despite more than twenty years in my home here, getting to the end without choking up is definitely a challenge. It truly honors 'the final sacrifice' that can be made for one's homeland. I will be singing my heart out at our Veterans’ Salute Concert on November 10, to honor all our veterans on both sides of the 'pond'. I hope you will be there too.

The Veterans’ Salute Concert will be at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, November 10, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 607 Airport Road.  It will feature the Chorale and the Rocket City Bones, a trombone ensemble.  Check out the Chorale website for information about how you can honor a veteran in the program. 

Alexandra Hall

Chorale Member