My Easter week at OCBC

2026: A mini-rebirth

(N.B. This post is lightly edited from an email that I recently sent to my choirmates and friends at Old Cambridge Baptist Church.)

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It was Saturday morning, and it was cold and rainy. It was “dress rehearsal”, the day before our actual performance.

I was tired and grouchy. I had made my usual doggy-daycare arrangements for Bentley, but a day early, to go to Petsmart in Fresh Pond for the morning. I had dragged myself out of bed after noticing (with gratitude) that our 9:30 start time had been moved to a 9:45 warmup in the chapel. So I could arrive as late as 10:00 without drawing undue notice. Every minute of extra sleep seemed like a blessing.

When I got to OCBC I was happy to see that “my spot” was open: a little-used handicapped spot which is actually twice as close to the front door as the parking lot (in actual steps). I parked the wrong way, just out of laziness. Also, I had learned that the Cambridge Police didn’t seem to care which way I was facing.

As I got out of the car, I unlocked the back door (to defeat the odd Honda peccadillo which passes as a “child protection” feature) so that I could get my music folder out of the back seat. As I stepped forward, I saw my foot plant itself on the edge of the uneven stony curb, and watched with horror as my ankle gave way and my entire body somehow tumbled to the ground, ass over teakettle.

I knew immediately that I wasn’t really hurt, but within seconds four disgustingly healthy Cambridge runners had stopped to help me get up. The only further indignity of being reminded how disabled I was now was to see all of the sweating, concerned faces of the well-meaning Good Samaritans as they pulled me to a standing position. I did a combination of thanking them and shooing them away, and headed to the right-sided entrance of the church. (I escaped with a small sore bruise which appeared on my kneecap over the next few days.)

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When I left the rehearsal, a bit early to avoid the two-dollar charge for picking up Bentley late, I saw that the Cambrige Police did indeed care which way my car was facing in my handicapped spot, and had given me a $25 ticket! Oh sh*t!

As I drove to Fresh Pond, I amortized the charge in my mind over all the Sundays that I had parked facing the wrong way in that spot since I had discovered it, and gave myself permission to feel a little bit better.

The next morning, Easter Morning, I woke up with a sore throat.

What to do? I remembered a similar situation from high school; I had played in a tennis match to show off for the girls in my youth group, and coughed hard throughout the match; the next morning I found that I had lost the use of my voice, and for a full month. And that was a half a century ago, when I was a lot healthier than I am now!

But I couldn’t let our conductor Daon Drisdom down. Plus, Brian, the de facto leader of our five-man bass section, was playing the viola and not singing. I had to sing. I took a zinc tablet and two extra strength Tylenols, and got dressed. No orange juice because of the Zicam! Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!

I put together the odd but effective-enough ensemble I had worn at Christmas. The only collared white shirt that fits my chubby neck is short-sleeved, but I have a lily-white golf jersey from Swansea Country Club which I can wear underneath it. To hide the country club logo, I wear my light grey Harvard Patagonia sweater. Red tie. Okay, it would have to do. I would make a pre-snap decision about whether to keep the sweater on. (That morning, Nate finally gave me the okay.)

My angelic Russian dog-owner friend Yevgenia agreed to take Bentley because Petsmart Easter hours started at 10:00 am. I had originally asked her for 9:00, but then found that rehearsal started at 8:30. Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t! I re-texted and asked her if I could drop him off a little before 8:30, and she said “I’ll probably be only half awake!” I wrote back “Me, too!” She came to the door in her robe, bleary-eyed, and Bentley rushed in eagerly to play with her dog Westley.

Although I knew that the meter maids didn’t work on Sunday, once burned was often enough, so I went the two extra blocks so that I could approach my spot facing in the right direction. Was it open? Hallelujah, it was!! I parked, and this time I didn’t even have to deal with the curb to get my music binder out of the back seat. So God and the Cambridge Police had conspired to show me how to get safely out of my own Honda…

I expected to hear our familiar warmup sounds “mi-may-mai-mo-moo” when I arrived seven minutes late. Instead, I heard a sound which blew my socks off! The sound was all of you guys, accompanied by Cholong Park on the full pipe organ, Beth Barefoot on the Steinway grand piano, and the full orchestra, singing “Holy, Holy, Holy!”

The last vestiges of my sore throat disappeared at that moment, and were replaced by a surge of adrenaline, dopamine, and sheer joy. I was part of a choir which sounded fabulous!!!

You women, who have been sounding wonderful to me lately, were being augmented by Cholong’s friend Yomi Park, our soprano soloist, who added a heavenly leading edge to your sound.

Brian was indeed playing the viola, but my three buddies, Charles, Gene, and Roger, were belting their hearts out. With some help I climbed up onto the riser, and our rearranging feet led to a chain reaction which knocked Gene’s water bottle over and, as I watched helplessly, spilled over half of its contents onto the wooden surface. One final sh*t, and that’s it!

I joined in the singing. This was going to be fun!!!

As you know, the rest is rapidly becoming part of OCBC history: Pastor Sarah, Tom Jones, and many other friends joined us to sing the Hallelujah chorus. Those of you who watch Cholong’s video will notice that I am not visible for that song. I actually was there, but the two singers who joined us were standing in front of me, and I didn’t trust my balance not to suffer the same fate as Gene’s water bottle, so I stayed seated. However, I didn’t hold my voice back, and I swear that at one point you can hear me singing with Tom on a baritone line; I was inspired to channel him and sing in an operatic tone, in the same way that I did fifty years ago when I was trying to sound mature, except that now I AM mature, so dammit, I just let it out!!

As a lifelong choir nerd (as our dear friend Mi-Eun Kim says), let me make an observation about our conductor Daon: his tempos (tempi?) are perfect! The arrangement of Holy, Holy, Holy is quite grandiose, and could be too much if a well-meaning conductor dwelt on it. Daon, in his musical genius, took the piece at a lively pace, which allowed him to use the rubatos (?) and ritards to even more dramatic effect without letting the song get bogged down.

The same thing could be said of the Hallelujah chorus. My late wife Carol’s high school alumni choir committed this piece to memory, and all 238 of them sang it by heart with only a piano and no sheet music when I saw them in 1984. Mr. Talbot Thayer conducted it at the exact same animated tempo that our Daon did.

Carol’s and my favorite conductor was Christopher Hogwood, who conducted both England’s Academy of Ancient Music and Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society. His tempi always sounded at first to be impossibly fast, until you realized that they were the exact speed that they were meant to be played by Bach, Handel, and Mozart. He made a lifelong critic of the Boston Globe’s music columnist, but God spoke directly to him, and God spoke directly to our Daon last Sunday morning. Daon knew that we couldn’t sing the piece that fast, but he went ahead and conducted it at the pace it was meant to be, and so that’s the way we sang it!

Also, I was afraid that our longer pieces were going to be too long. Again, Daon’s understanding of the music prevailed. He found the perfect tempo for both Don’t Cry and My Redeemer’s Love, and both of them built to wonderfully satisfying conclusions.

Let me stop myself here and tell all of you this: I may have sung in some choirs which are arguably more skilled than ours, but I have never felt more sheer joy than singing with all of you has given me, both at Christmas and now this past Easter, both challenging times for me.

Thank you for being my choirmates and my friends.

Ed Koh