Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Zoom: Stress & Singing

Joan Fearnley conducts three choirs: the children and women’s choir of the Notre Dame Cathedral and Bytown Voices. However, the women’s and children’s choir have been canceled, leaving Bytown Voices as Joan’s only active choir. Bytown Voices is a non-audition choir currently consisting of 60 voices. During our zoom chat, Joan spoke about the ups and downs of conducting and directing a choir in a fully virtual format.

Joan was very open about the mental strain and anxiety caused by a life led online. She states that her Tuesday's entirety is spent feeling anxious and nervous about zoom choir practice in the evenings. In contrast, Wednesday is spent feeling relieved that she had made it through another week of rehearsals. This strain is not caused by the choir or its members but rather the fear of failing her members in their new virtual life. Joan’s day to day life was generally spent at home during the day while her musical career took place during the evening. However, because of the pandemic, Joan is never home alone during the day. Both her children and her husband are present at home. Without adequate time to recharge, it isn't easy to be fully present in any area of your life.

Joan is fearless when speaking on mental health, both during our interview and on her social media platforms. In a Facebook post on October 28th, Joan shares her experience with work-related stress and how it can negatively affect your daily life outside of work.

In this post, she speaks on the stress of a postponed job, a problem that most musicians face at this time, and how that never-ending anxiety seeps into every part of your day.

To combat her stress, Joan worked on projects to fulfill aspects of her life, lacking for many during this pandemic. She found a way to help by designing a mask made for singers. This mask's pattern has no copyright restrictions and can be made, manufactured, or sold by anyone, making the mask design completely accessible. Joan has satisfied her intellectual drive by continuing her research on Nadia and Lilly Boulanger’s musical newsletters and strengthening her piano and music theory skills to help her choir better. Lastly, she has kept her sense of humour alive and posts funny memes to her Facebook page every day.

When it comes to virtual choir, Joan explains that she often goes between feeling as though her work has a purpose and feeling discouraged. As she stated in a recent Facebook post, “art is work, and it’s hard these days,” (3).

Bytown Voices has become somewhat of a refuge for her outlying choir members. Many women from her women’s choir joined Bytown Voices, as well as a couple of people from the Choral Society whose choir was canceled. Of the many challenges Joan and her members face, the biggest issues come back to support and community, both about the practice of singing and the social aspect of choir. A major complaint Joan had received from her choir members is that they felt as though they were not good singers when singing along with choir and practicing alone. The change in venue from a church or hall to their living rooms makes a big difference in acoustics, and singing without the support of other members has made them feel as though they are bad singers. Joan recalls her members saying things like, “Oh, my gosh, I sound terrible. I can't believe I'm still in the choir,” or “I can't believe you haven't thrown me out.” But Joan retaliated and told them to be kinder to themselves, that they are just in a new environment with new stressors and that they are all doing wonderfully.

The shift of focus from the ensemble to oneself has been challenging for Joan’s choir members. The current purpose of choir is not to sound great, or even just good. It is to make sure the people in choir feel fulfilled, that they do not feel alone. Joan received feedback from a few members who spoke about how important choir still is to them as it gives them a sense of normalcy and constancy in their lives. She tries her hardest to keep the community alive in the hearts of her members. They even had a Christmas party last week to celebrate the end of a choir season.

All this to say, that even though choir directing is stressful, directors and conductors understand that the purpose of choir is to create connection in the lives of their members.

Choir is community. Choir is connection.

References:

Fearnley, Joan. 2020. “Goodnight Moon. Goodnight Zoom.” Facebook, September 26, 2020.

Fearnley, Joan. 2020. “On July 1st I posted about where I was regarding this pandemic and singing.” Facebook, October 18, 2020.

Fearnley, Joan. 2020. “Ready for the Bytown Voices Christmas Party.” Facebook, December 8, 2020.

Fearnley, Joan. 2020. “Sharing this because some of you may relate.” Facebook, October 28, 2020.