Now that graduation feels extremely close, I’ve found myself reflecting on how Cantabile has changed the course of my life.

In middle school, I found a flyer for a choir nearby, and auditioned on a whim. Standing in my first-ever rehearsal surrounded by all those tall, poised, older singers was terrifying. I had somehow landed up in Vocalise, completely unable to read sheet music, and way out of my depth, or so I thought. I mean, back then, I couldn’t even tell you how many lines are on a staff. But when I sang a warm-up with this choir for the very first time, I felt like the voices of all 50 people in that room were coming out of my mouth. That was the moment I knew that I had to stay. Despite my abysmal music theory knowledge and my utter lack of choral experience, my peers smiled and patiently helped me learn everything, even Facetiming me outside of rehearsal to teach me the part. This is just the kind of community cantabile is. They welcomed me without judgement, encouraged me, and gave me the resources I needed to grow into the musician I am today. Now, after spending time with them and learning from them, I know how to speak up and lead future singers.

It was around this time that I saw how Cantabile is about so much more than learning and regurgitating notes. I had never before sung music where I studied the composer, the poet, what society was like when it was written, which larger movements were going on, and even the architecture of the time.

When we perform a song, the audience may not know what we talked about in rehearsal, but Elena’s guidance through the context we study is what lets us embody the song's meaning with our faces, bodies and voices. I can’t talk about artistic interpretation without talking about how Elena taught me to look into music. It felt like each song needed us to do something different to understand the meaning - we waltzed around the room, we struck poses representing different emotions, we pretended to be seaweed, and a whole host of other activities that somehow helped us relax into exactly the characters we needed to become for our songs.

We took these characters to all the amazing places that we’ve been given a chance to perform in, from the California theater to New Zealand. During one of our concerts of that tour, we were singing Imagine with the audience, and I really felt the lyrics “I hope someday you will join us, and the world will be as one”

It is incomprehensible to me that there could have been a version of me who never saw that flyer in middle school. There is so much that I have directly and indirectly learned through cantabile, and I am going off to college more empathetic, competent, and a stronger leader than I could have become without it. I will forever be grateful for this time in my life and the people I’ve interacted with as a result.