A Joyful Noise
Can't sing? Who cares. Having fun is all that matters when Marion Gray conducts Handrel's Messiah.
By Edgar Allen Beem, Photography by Dean MacAdam
Stand up, please! We've got four minutes to do a six-minute piece. Keep your books up! Heads up! Look at me. I'm all dressed up for you." Marion Gray, a small, commanding woman in a teal blue floral dress, is putting fifty-odd volunteer singers through a "brush-up" just minutes before their performance of Handel's Messiah. The six-minute piece they are about to rehearse is the rousing Hallelujah Chorus that will end their sing-along. The vaulted sanctuary of the Rockland Congregational Church, which resembles nothing quite so much as an overturned wooden hull, is filled with the sound of voices warming up.
