Handel's Messiah
One of greatest highlights for me during the Christmas season is singing in Handel's Messiah. I have participated with my daughters since at least 1991, singing under Doyle West at the Interstake Center in Oakland. He was a wonderful conductor. He was very spiritual and understood the message of the beautiful music, yet he was a lot of fun to rehearse under. (He has since retired after leading the Messiah choirs for more than 30 years.) Rehearsals were way more fun than the performances. The performances were typically on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with Friday being a sing-along. I loved singing in those choirs, which were typically about 200 voices with a full (tho non-professional) orchestra. There were always 4 amazing soloists. On the years that we couldn't participate in all the rehearsals, we really tried to sing with the choir on the night of the sing-along. After we moved to Fresno, it was just too hard to get back to Oakland every year for the performances an...