The Ellis Glee

At the Ellis School there wasn't cool and uncool.
At my small all-girls high school all classes, clubs, and activities were created equal. Intelligence, oddity, and individuality were celebrated. And to a certain extent, the less mainstream, the cooler you were.
The best thing was that there were no boys to guide the segmentation of the winners and losers. In our insular environment, we were all pretty cool.

Instead of a proud football team that doubled as bullies, we had a hand-full of non-traditional athletes that welcomed even the most unathletic to come out for the team.
Instead of perky cheerleaders with perfect bodies and a mission to be exclusive, we had the E-Tigs, who didn't cheer, but stepped with sass and moonlighted as the diversity club.
The artsy folks were celebrated for their expressive nature, so none of them ever became dark or dismal. The girls that were doing calculus 5, economics and complex physics were envied by the poets.
And the girls getting their papers published in academic journals by Junior-year were envied by the calculators.
The fat girls were celebrated.
The skinny girls encouraged to eat more.
The pretty girls weren't actually pretty unless they were witty and smart.
We all wore the same ugly green uniform so we didn't have the ability to use our personal wardrobes as our cool card.
And instead of a pop-singing Glee made up of misfits, we had a classically rooted Glee Club, which was by no means uncool at the Ellis School.

I first learned about the Ellis Glee Club on a chilly early-December day when I was in sixth grade. The cultural outing that crowned my standard field hockey to piano to dance class Thursday was Erin's first Holiday Concert.

Erin was a natural talent in the vocal arts and nurtured her talent through elementary school by singing Broadway tunes alongside my Dad's piano accompaniment after dinner. I often tried to intercede and join the fun, but 9.5 times out of 10 I was called out for being flat, so ran away crying, envious of my sister's pure and on-key voice and her ability to carry on my Dad's legacy of vocal artistry. When she started at the Ellis School, she was thrilled to put her voice and nightly practicing to the test as a member of Glee Club. She came home telling stories about sectionals, new friends, Mrs. Gray, potential solos and the first concert - the annual Holiday Concert.

I had been to and been part of many holiday concerts before so I figured it would be on par with a St. Edmund's counterpart - Kindergartners singing, "I'm a candy cane on the Christmas Tree," middle-schoolers belting out a trifecta of Hannukah songs, and upper schoolers wailing and squeaking through silent night on the instruments they just barely knew how to play. I was in for a surprise though.

It started with a catered holiday dinner (and this wasn't a crappy dinner - they had the white Breadworks rolls and all!) Then we were encouraged to take our seat in the auditorium. My family cozied into a pew and as the lights dimmed a bit, the Glee Club, dressed in long black skirts and pressed white collared shirts, took center stage. A perky woman strutted down the aisle, her long black skirt swooshed, the taffeta underneath it crunched, and her silky dark hair pulled back in a pony-tail bounced. She stood with her back to the audience right in front of the Glee Club, struck up her baton, gestured her head to confirm that everyone was ready (Mrs. Crosby, the piano-player included), pulsed the beat and BAM! a resonating harmony warmed the entire auditorium and my mouth dropped. She pulled back the sound and guided the vocalists into a mellower note.

It wasn't until the end of the song when I realized I didn't understand one word. What I had just heard was not a Christmas carol that I knew and loved. Instead it was music and its language was universal. It was wonderful. It was the best holiday sound I had ever heard.

For the next 90 minutes or so, I watched every person, every movement, every bounce of Mrs. Gray's ponytail and every smile on my sister's face. I couldn't wait to be on that stage - to be part of the Ellis Glee Club.

Three yeas later, during my freshman year at Ellis, I got the chance. While St. Edmund's didn't seem to know a good voice from a weak one, Mrs. Gray saw right through my ability to belt out a flat note, and focused on my inability to sing in concert and with humility. In the four years that I was in Glee Club, I learned a lot more than how to sing a Christmas carol in Latin, roll my r's, sing pure vowels, stay in key, rock an outfit reserved for the convent, and hold my alto part. I learned how to harmonize. I learned to sing as a team, how to let the unexpected folks take center stage, and how to pull back my booming voice.

It's okay that I wasn't the best singer in Glee Club. I didn't have to be. I had a team to enrich and color my voice. The thing that mattered with Glee Club was being able to have fun with music and to learn that there was a math, science and poetry to it. It was about being part of something big and different. And it was about having an amazing teacher who was able to put me in the right place.

I appreciate the attention that Glee is getting and I must admit, I have become a Glee junkie. But the Gleeks don't have anything on the Ellis Glee Club and Mr. Shue's perm pales in comparison to Mrs. Gray's bouncing ponytail that could echo the complex rhythm of Bach's Magnificat.

Lo.