Can You Go Home Again If You've Never Been Home?

From Michael Parker, a member of the chorus for three years and a life-long Robert Shaw admirer.

Several of you have heard my story in person, however, still being “new” (only in my third season) to all of this I know that I have not met a good portion of you and to that end I offer this testimonial and assertion.

            I am a native Atlantan. My family “came down off the mountain”, as we like to say in my family, in about 1870 from Tennessee to the area around Decatur. My dad’s family lived there until about 1943, when they decided that Decatur was getting far too crowded and moved to Suwanee in Gwinnett County to start a 35 acre farm just off of Buford Hwy. My mother’s family lived in North Carolina until her father got a job with the TVA and migrated his family throughout the south building dams, until finally his last project brought him to Georgia for the construction of the new dam on the Chattahoochee River. After his work was completed, he decided to buy one of the lots around the lake and finish raising his family. So when I say, “I’m a native.” I mean it. Georgia is my home, Atlanta my heart.

            I have been a musician for as long as I can remember. My parents tell stories of a “little Michael” getting frustrated in the backseat of our old Buick, about the age of five or six, listening to classical music in the car and whining that “Beethoven did it wrong!” because the music was supposed to “do this” to my ear and not go the “way” the master brought his phrases to conclusion.  My mother knew I was going to be a composer.

            My father always sang in the church choir and my mother sang in the college choir at Gainesville State. I use to sit on Grace Bailey’s lap, our very elderly organist at our ‘little white church up on the hilltop’, every Sunday morning after church so she could show me all the sounds that came from the big “Lowrey” box she sat behind that lit up, flashed and roared to “What a friend we have in Jesus” and “There’s Power in the Blood”.

            At the age of five, over summer vacation from Kindergarten, my mother decided it was time. She signed me up for class piano lessons over the summer. Talk about a duck to water! After two years of classes, private lessons were started and after years of begging, she thought it was time for me to see my first symphony concert in person. So there I was, age seven, 1987, Woodruff Arts Center, right side of the house, seven rows down from the backdoor, and one seat in from the isle. “Christmas with Robert Shaw”.  “Hallelujah!” “..the angels did say”, “Joy to the World!” on that crisp December matinée.

            And of all of the things I remember about that day from the program (which I still have) to my new Christmas wool sweater (which itched something fierce!), was my mother and father lifting me up so I could stand on my cushioned seat to see over the heads of the people standing for Handel’s glorious chorus and watching memorized by a white haired man in a midnight blue suit, leading the sound I could only attribute to heaven, who would from that point on change the direction of my life forever. I know after leaving that concert, chorus would forever be my first love.

            After a childhood and youthful whirlwind of concerts with the Atlanta Boy Choir, Gwinnett Young Singers, District and All-State Choruses, State Literary Boy’s Solo rankings, and time spent at Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, my freshman year I was in a composition lesson. It was late in the evening and I was speaking in my professor’s office just after my lesson had finished. He stopped me as I was leaving and said, rather nonchalantly, “Michael, did you hear that Robert Shaw died today?” It was as if my world, in a moment, had stopped. I felt I had stopped breathing and the rest of the dialog he was saying suddenly muffled into incomprehensible murmur. All I could think was, “it could be a rumor, get confirmation before you believe it. Hold it together. Don’t cry here. Whatever you do, don’t cry here!” I managed to thank him for the lesson and I closed the door to his office quickly.

            “Check first, get information, Check first, confirm, CONFIRM!” was all that sped through my mind as I sprinted across campus toward my dorm room and my laptop internet connection. My roommate was fortunately away for the week as I burst into the room and typed furiously to get the news. As I read the AP announcement and paper copy, my heart sank with each passing phrase, “Yale, theatre, dead, Connecticut, World Renowned Conductor”, I closed my laptop, turned off the lights in my room, calmly walked to my CD changer and loaded it neatly in chronological order, Victoria, Mozart, Cherubini, Berlioz, Brahms, Verdi, Dvorak, Faure, Durufle, Britten, Stravinsky, Howells, and pressed the “repeat all” button. I then cried myself to sleep every night for the next week.

            I didn’t say much the next two weeks. I excused myself from Conservatory and Chamber Choir rehearsal and my professors knew the reason, they didn’t have to ask. I once heard a group of professors inquire about me as I passed them in the cafeteria, “Is he OK? He doesn’t look good.” “He’s from Atlanta.” Was the reply, and that was all it took to explain it.

            When the memorial concert was announced a few days later, I was on the phone with my parents immediately.

“Mom, I need to come home. I need to be home!” She didn’t understand.

“Mama, please! I need to be there. I know it sounds crazy ...”

“Yes, I understand I didn’t sing with him but…”

“Mama, PLEASE! I NEED TO COME HOME!”

I had to stay in Virginia. Alone.

            I was all I could do not to quit that semester right there. It seemed like studying music would just make it hurt worse. But I realized that I could still be true to the music and to Mr. Shaw. I could become the best musician I could possibly be and then come home and dedicate my musical abilities to my home, the state of Georgia, my city of Atlanta and the place of my heart from all those many years ago, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. And that is exactly what I did.

As soon as I finished school thoughts of moving to Atlanta consumed me and as soon as I was in my new home in Gwinnett County three summers ago, my eyes were on the paper for the audition notice. I was more than scared that I wouldn’t get into the ensemble, Norman looked friendly but imposing seated behind the table that day when I sang for him and the day I received the email that I had been accepted as a member will forever rank as one of the proudest of my entire life.

And now, today, a lock out, the prospect of a canceled season, quibbles over money and who makes more, and why, and debt, and annual budgets, and bottom lines, well here’s what I say:

I have worked too hard. I have suffered too much. I have witnessed too many miracles. I have put in too many long nights, I have studied too many scores, clapped too many rhythms, sung too many notes, made to many pencil markings, dry cleaned too many tuxes, breathed deep too many times…and I breath again, and again, and again.

Just to make music.  My art lives in my chest, and in my chest beats my heart, my heart lives in this city and with this Orchestra and with THE Chorus.

Fix it, Ladies and Gentlemen…fix it.  And my heart still beats in hope and in song.

Michael Parker

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