--by David Jones, Ragazzi Executive Director and father of Rick, Ragazzi alumnus
A Chaperone "Moment" – A Chaperone Creed
There are many "proud papa" moments in my career as parent, volunteer and Ragazzi administrator. As you might expect, most of them are moments wrapped around my own son's singing exploits. There are a few, though, that have little to do with him and two in particular that arose from my single longest stint as a chaperone. Ragazzi undertook a nine-day tour in 2002 (a full Ragazzi generation ago!) to Minnesota where we participated in both America Fest and the World Choral Symposium.
I'll relate my second recollection first; the purely chaperone-inspired "proud papa" memory. It isn't musical, or at least only peripherally so. America Fest was an annual festival (now defunct) for choruses and choirs of men and boys, where we heard some spectacular boy-choirs (a notable one from the Czech Republic) and equally astonishing adult groups like Cantus and Chor Leone. At the end of our week in St. Cloud, the festival moved en masse to Minneapolis and joined the World Choral Symposium, a gathering of choral professionals from all over the world. This was the first one held in North America and having the singers from America Fest participate in the massed choir presentation in Orchestra Hall was an incredible honor. I was chaperoning our boys (the trebles) just before they were to go on stage, along with hundreds of other children from all over the globe. There were just a couple of single-thickness doors separating the hordes of children from the performers on stage and the inevitable buzz of excitement caused the Symposium back stage director to ask for quiet. The children managed to quiet down for about 60 seconds, but then the buzz began growing again.
At that point, I put our Ragazzi boys on Code Silence. As if a switch had been thrown, they each and every one settled down, drawing on the inner resources they had developed over their Ragazzi careers, focusing their thoughts and turning their attention to the imminent task of singing for some of the choral world's biggest big-wigs. In all honesty, it didn't really do much to reduce the total volume of sound emanating from backstage, but it was truly an astounding thing to see... this pool of Ragazzi serenity amidst the fizzy hubbub. Picture a flash mob of Zen masters in Grand Central Station. It still stirs me when I think of how utterly self-possessed and disciplined those boys were. And I wasn't the only one to notice – the woman who organized America Fest noticed it as well and subsequently made Ragazzi a standing offer to return to America Fest, any summer.
How did these boys, from age 9 to 13 manage to do what their peers could not? The answer is training. I've told many adults new to Ragazzi that our boys may sing like angels, but… well, they're still boys. Obviously, that really isn't fair to the older boys who have internalized the discipline Ragazzi teaches and who are capable of uncommon self-control.
How does this happen? It's not accidental and it isn't simply a byproduct of learning to sing. In addition to teaching the boys the right way to sing the right notes, Ragazzi's faculty teach the right ways to behave. They spend a considerable amount of time on and attention to how the boys behave, singly and in groups. But it's not faculty, alone, who have the responsibility to help the younger boys learn how to follow in the older boys' footsteps. The faculty have partners in teaching – our adult volunteers, the chaperones.
One of Ragazzi's main goals is to see that our boys – all of them – are successful. In a choral environment where teamwork and individual responsibility are so intertwined, the boys need lots of guidance. That's where chaperones come in. They provide the boys with reminders of boundaries and good behavior in partnership with the faculty. Ragazzi chaperones are an essential element in helping the younger boys become the masters of their own behavior that we expect the older boys to be.
You have to remember that boys come into Ragazzi not knowing how to behave to the standards we ask of the older boys. And most of them come into the program completely unable to do so. It's a long haul from PG novice to Concert Group and it's not just a matter of keeping up with Theory and learning some music. Ragazzi's discipline standards are not learned by reading the Handbook (although there's plenty of useful info, there) and they aren't internalized in one telling from a director. It's something that seeps into boys as they are exposed to good modeling by adults and older boys, and by thoughtful correction by faculty and chaperones over the years as boys work their way up to Concert Group and YME.
Just as we ask a lot of the boys, we ask a lot of our chaperones. In one sense, chaperoning should be pretty simple; you just have to act in loco parentis (in place of the parent). There is a catch, though, because it's not just any parent we ask you to act in the place of, it's an ideal parent. A parent who will watch diligently, intervene judiciously, correct firmly (but gently) and be ready to move right on to the next boy who needs help. Becoming a successful chaperone requires meetings with experienced chaperones, meetings with faculty and knowing the standards. You also need to be able to follow faculty cues, both explicit and implied. But it's all about helping every boy who needs reminders and direction.
You wouldn't expect to be able to bake a cake by just tossing all of the ingredients together in a bowl. No, you need to beat some ingredients together, sift others, blend and mix, but not too much. And then there's that whole oven thing... Similarly, you can't expect to make a Ragazzi boy by teaching him some music and stuffing him into a uniform. It's more complicated and challenging for him and for his teachers – all of his teachers, both faculty and chaperones.
A boy's ability to maintain Code Silence in challenging environments (backstage at concerts or even transiting international airports) is really only a marker for the much deeper level of self-discipline we ask of an older boy; that we train him for from the beginning and that we all do our best to help him achieve.
Oh! And the first "proud papa" memory from that trip? I can remember a night midway through that week in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It was the upper mid-west in August: hot as Hades and just as humid - but no one was about to miss the daily evening concert. Oh, the glorious singing we heard that week! So, it was Ragazzi's turn to sing to a packed house, muggy beyond all reason. Ragazzi's YME were up and they started out with Palestrina's Super Flumina (By the Waters of Babylon), a standard of Italian Renaissance polyphony (weaving vocal lines), that the majority of this special, trained audience knew. From the very first note, a haunting, floating, sustained A by the basses; soft, sweet, pure and insistent, I knew they were going to nail it. And nail it they did – along with the rest of their program. I don't really recall much of CG's program that week, even though my son was a treble, but that one piece by YME – even that one note – is etched in my memory, and continues to fuel a swelling pride every time I think of it. Those young men rocked that house.
