A Little Night Tribute

I was a high school student like any other.
Insecure.

I was very active in high school.
I was a sometimes-honors and AP student.
But I never studied as hard as my friends that graduated at the top of our class.
I was a cheerleader.
And, although I had some wonderful individual friendships there,
I definitely did not belong with the group.
I participated in a lot of clubs, from Key Club and SADD to Peer Helpers.
My high school actually had a club called the Girl's Club, too.
And I belonged to it.
I was an officer in several clubs, and even president of one.
But I never, ever felt at home in any of those rooms,
Or in any of those activities.
I always had my guard up,
That little voice in the back of my head that constantly worried.

I'm a pleaser.
And I just had to have everyone like me,
(And that's still a part of me now!)

At lunch and after school, I wandered between all of the groups that gathered around campus.
In truth, I felt like I could sit with any of the clusters and have fun.
But I never felt like a core participant of any of them.
You know those "Most Likely" awards at the conclusion of school?
I was nominated for several.
And won none.

That's just the person I was.
I knew everyone.
I think most people liked me.  (Please, let this be true.)
But my insecurity stopped me from the big, memory-making moves.
I flew under the radar.

It took me a couple of years after graduation to realize the truth everyone else comes to learn:
We were all unsure of our place.

After all, that's at the core of teenage angst, isn't it?
A rite of passage that we each run through?

But, I was so very lucky.
My freshman year, I was forced out of orchestra because it conflicted with cheerleading.
(I played the violin intensely from 4th - 8th grade, and added the viola in 8th.)
Sad and unwilling to go through school without music, I signed up for concert choir.
I believe that choice was the single best choice that I made in my high school career.

I had never sung in an organized choir in my life,
Although I had a passion for music and a great foundation with piano lessons that began in 3rd grade.
I had secretly always wanted to be a singer.
So I eagerly went to that first class my first semester,
And that is where I met Mr. Steffen.

I took a seat in the Alto section and made friends quickly.
I found that choir was amazing in that,
Because we all were focused on making music together,
Somehow the individual insecurities faded.
No, I'm not claiming that they went away... that just isn't true.
But they faded,
Enough to make the brown chairs that were placed in long, slightly curved rows graduating by steps,
Home.

I spent the first semester in Concert Choir and it was my favorite class.
And I auditioned for Vocal Jazz at the end of the semester and made it!
My last years were spent in the Chamber Singers, which was the top choir at my school.
And I repeated my attendance in Vocal Jazz for my senior year, too.

In choir I learned a lot about music.
As an early student of the piano and the violin,
I already knew a good deal about theory and had decent ear training.
But singing brought in a new level of understanding.
Daily practice in warm-ups that reached outside of traditional scales gave me more exposure.
Singing taught me about harmonies and melodies,
And allowed me to bring a new level of voicing to my piano.
And, as for the piano, oh I was so fortunate.
Mr. Steffen allowed me the opportunity to accompany,
First for the end-of-semester individual performances of friends,
Then for break-away sessions by parts.
And in my senior year, he decided to let a group of us rotate accompanying.
I even came back and played in concerts after graduating, as my sister was a Chamber Singer too.
I cannot begin to explain, or even truly comprehend, what that experience did for my playability,
My sight reading,
My ability to conductor- and choir- follow in a way that most pianists struggle to learn.

But singing was even more than that.
It tied together my life.
It gave me a voice and a release.
It brought me confidence.
Somehow, I successfully delivered solo performances regularly.
And even dared do it without microphone to a small theater.
It was safe to sing through strong emotions of all kinds,
And I used song to build and support friendships.

Talk about friendships.
My greatest connections all came out of that room.
I remember many times when with a friend, or two, or three,
Or maybe six,
We would sing through times good and times difficult.
Because of concerts and performances we gave together,
Activities where we spent time together,
Trips where we traveled together,
I was able to build friends that were true and safe.
Friends that I could actually be "me" around.

We went to San Francisco, Orlando and Oahu.
Just as exciting were our annual performances in Disneyland's Candlelight ceremony.
I will never forget my first Candlelight performance,
Caroling from the back of the park which would later become Toon Town,
All the way up to stand in front of the train station on Main Street.
Standing there as part of the biggest choir I've ever taken part in,
All lit by candles,
And hearing James Earl Jones' voice ring through the dark,
"And it came to pass..."
What beauty that ceremony was.
It lives fresh in my mind still,
And I often find myself singing it's songs to this day.
Chalk that up to one more magical thing that I have stored in my mind,
One more treasured memory that I can lean on for intense happiness,
One more experience that I have
Because of Mr. Steffen.

We don't always like our teachers in high school.
There were times I wasn't terribly pleased with something that happened in the choir room.
But in the years that have followed high school,
These are the memories that I cherish the most,
The ones that I am most grateful for.
And I owe that to Mr. Steffen.

Because if it weren't for his decision to teach music at Poly High School,
If he just did his job by the description,
Who knows if I would have stayed in choir past that Freshman year.
And oh, how my life would be different.

But that's not what Mr. Steffen did.
He poured everything he had into that job.
He gave it his life.
And so did his family.
He was there hours longer than needed.
He grew clubs that had popularity and interest.
(And that wasn't an easy task in a high school music program at the time, pre-Glee.)
He drove the fundraising tasks that allowed us to do the fun things.
He accompanied us on every trip.
He had the vision that allowed choir to be the life support it was to me.
He chose the songs that gave me a way to voice feelings that were hard to understand.
He pushed us and fostered all of those friendships.
He grew the music in all of us by bringing us together.
And that makes him so much more than just another teacher.

Today I still play the piano.
I teach lessons, too.
I try to find ways to teach music to all ages that I can touch,
Ranging from preschoolers to high school students,
(And, unofficially, some adults.)
I try to pass on the importance of what music is,
And that's something I wouldn't fully know without Mr. Steffen.

So, when a group of old high school friends heard that he was retiring,
My radar went up.
Just like so many of my old friends,
I wanted him to know what he had done.
What he had accomplished.
I wanted to help show him how big his work had been,
How far it had reached.
This man, who gave 30 years at one school,
Touched so many students.
And many of us wanted to pay him back.

The reason that I flew my family down from Washington to California,
Was to sing tribute to this man.

So, on April 24th, one year to the day after my baby girl graduated the NICU,
I found myself walking onto Poly's campus for the first time in nearly two decades.
It was an amazing feeling to be joined right from the parking lot by friends I hadn't seen in as long.

I have rarely sung in a choir since high school.
In fact, my last formal choir experience was during my sophomore year of college.
That night, I felt overwhelmed and unsure of my ability to sing.
But in that choir room,
Where reunion upon reunion happened for a good hour,
All pretense faded away.
(For real this time, now that most of that intense insecurity has gone away.)

I stood with my friends,
In that choir room which had been removed of its rows of brown chairs,
And rehearsed the songs I had just practiced the night before.
(And by just, I mean that was my only practice.)

And it felt like home.
It was during the song Danny Boy that I found a tear on my cheek,
And I knew that this would be a truly, truly special night.

After even more reunions,
And lots of story telling and catching up,
We filed onto risers on the stage of the Little Theater.
(The theater at my high school was dedicated for a man named Little.)
We all joked about not wanting to be the one to fall off.
And figured out how to squeeze in tight enough to fit the big crowd of students,
Past and present,
That had gathered to honor a dedicated teacher.
And we waited to surprise him at his arrival.

And then word came that he was on his way in,
He walked in, unsuspecting, as students from each of his teaching years stood and sang for him.

After a short speech from this brave and gifted choir alumni organizer, Ryann Clover,
We sang and sang and sang some more.

And then Mr. Steffen was invited to the stage to lead his students,
One last time,
In singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Mr. Steffen had a thing about the Hallelujah Chorus.
We all knew that if we ever attended any of his concerts that included this piece,
We were invited to join his choir as alumni.
It was a special song.
(And one that I still know, without music, to this day.)
We gave that song all we had.
It was surreal to sing for him again.
Now that I have had subsequent experience,
I know how hard conducting is...
And how he knows how to conduct this song the way he knows the back of his hand.
That was an intensely powerful moment,
Beyond descriptive words.

And then Mr. Steffen began to speak.
He spoke about a lot of things,
But there was one truth that struck a chord with me.
He talked about how we, as singers, have a special ability to convey beauty not only through music,
But also through words.
He was obviously moved,
As were we all.

After the concert's conclusion, we returned to the choir room and continued the reunions.

And then joined the audience, all hoping to have a word with Mr. Steffen.
We all wanted to share with him the ways that he had changed and improved our lives.
Many of us have gone on to keep music in our lives,
Some of us teaching others, too.

Mr. Steffen must have spoken to us one by one for hours.

This was an intimately special experience.
And I'm going to forever be glad that I made the decision to participate.
Singing with this choir was my first formal choral experience in 18 years.
It was amazing.
I was surprised at how quickly it all came back to me.
I think that's a testament to my teacher.

My husband and my eldest son attended the concert that night.
Charlie summarized the feeling well.
He said it was an "excellent, hilarious concert."
Because he is autistic, he doesn't always use the most appropriate feeling words.
So I asked him what made the night hilarious.
His answer was,
"There was all the laughter, always laughing.
And there were six hundred thousand twenty smiles,
And the clapping."

Thank you, Mr. Steffen, for all of your years of dedication.
You've done more than you know.