For obvious reasons I’m not naming people or organisations involved in this story. I am also falsifying the date. But I want my feelings to be on record.
We have been invited to join another local choir to sing a major choral work in a charity concert. The concert will be conducted by the other choir’s director, X.
Now X is known to be a bit of a sharp operator (as I found out when I sang in one of their other choirs). Some of X’s recent concerts have been, let us say, inopportunely timed from our point of view. A major concert of one of X’s choirs was put on in a large venue just round the corner from where we were performing the same night, on a date arranged with our venue years previously. Probably if it had not taken place our audience would have been half as large again. Another concert anticipated by a few months a work we were due to perform. It’s hard not to conclude that at best, X thinks themselves above using the system local choirs have for avoiding clashes of date or repertoire, and at worst is deliberately trying to damage us by stealing our audience.
Should I go and sing for X? I really don’t feel that I want to, certainly not under the banner of a choir whose life they seem to want to make difficult at a time when competition for audiences is especially acute. And yet I’m being encouraged to because of the nature of the cause the concert is in aid of (one which has received a lot of media coverage). I think that is simply moral blackmail; I’m sure that people will flock to the concert however large the choir, and will forgive any imperfections in the performance, simply because it is a way of offering their support. They don’t need me, and replying to the choir committee I have explained why I’m not singing.