Magical thinking; something realists and pragmatists scoff at, something many dreamers and visionaries aspire to, and, a fugue state that choir singers sometimes tune into without realizing it. Magical thinking; it can arise from close ongoing focus, from the purposeful pursuit of understanding or excellence, or from a powerful obsession. The creation of art is fundamentally allowing the human mind to indulge in a form of magical thinking so that it may transmute the mundane into the mysterious, present the parochial as universal, and shape the everyday into something endowed with deeper meanings (or not).

"But what" you may ask "does magical thinking have to do with singing in a choir? You say "Singing in choir is about learning and mastering parts, about blending with the ensemble to create "the one sound". What does magical thinking have to do with it?" Everything!

Everything, from the notes the composer selected and positioned (from within the limited possibilities presented by the fixed universe of composition) to create through "magical thinking" the melodies that haunt us, the tonal clusters that vibrate us, the dynamics that tug at all the emotional knots in the human psyche. 

And then, we, the choir, take the composer's score, their vision, their moments of magical thinking and begin our own obsessive work. First we dissect and reassemble the voices, then we build and blend the parts together. Notes mastered, we search, through communal singing/listening, for the core emotional truths that emerge from the score holograph-like, humming with an intensity that seems otherworldly. And that is when, if we are incredibly fortunate, we, the choir and the audience listening, emerge into a realm of magical singing/listening/thinking where the mundane, the parachoial and the everyday, are for a brief few moments left behind.

"This is all so ridiculously over the top!" You shout, and yes, of course it is! But what do you expect, after all we are talking about magic, about musical "tricks" where we know there is a false bottom somewhere in that box, we just can't find it. 

But why not, as we delve into our second major Karl Jenkins work this year, why not watch and listen and feel for the magic he put into "Stella Natalis". The most obvious place to search for the magic is in his incredible melodies, but there is so much more. Personally, I find his distinctive rhythms and high-energy tempos a launching point for hypnotic levitations and his incorporation of so many genres and musical idioms stimulates a glowing global mindset that opens the heart to all, or perhaps his gibberish language experiments pull you a "not here realm".

There will be so much magic to mine here, let's all turn on our headlamps and get ready to leave the realm of the everyday and head down into the tunnels of "Stella Natalis" to chip and hammer and hum loose all the nuggets of magical thinking we can! 

"Jack, jack, jack, jack, jack, jack...brrrrrrrrgh!"