Society of Orpheus and Bacchus mini-reunion

This past weekend, 25 alums of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus gathered on hallowed soil in New Haven to sing, eat, drink, play some golf and reconnect with each other. We swapped stories, met spouses, had laughs and we sang. Oddly, we had done virtually none of this for the last 35 years or so. A few years ago, the group held a reunion to celebrate its 70th anniversary. A few of us looked around the room and noticed how there were almost no attendees who had graduated before the mid '70's. And we planned to do something about it.

I spoke to several of "missing" guys and many said they'd never return. They had seen the group at one time or another 10, 20 or 30 years ago and decided they did not belong with these people. The identification vectors had been broken. Some didn't like the performance values of the group. Some found the humor offensive. Some observed the kids were not "like us". And some found they couldn't sing the old songs with these guys. The music had changed. There were new songs, of course. But many of the old songs had been reworked and the guys could not close their eyes and sing them from beginning to end. There were too many speed bumps!

One of my old pals known affectionately as Kow decided to forge ahead and plan an event just for this lost generation. Maybe we couldn't reach back to the 40's and 50's, but at least we might collect the guys we knew, sing the old songs as we had learned them and through that reestablish a connection with the group.

We cloistered ourselves at first - sang together with restored musical arrangements, something I have been working on the past several years. We were able to interest several of the group's most significant arrangers to come and conduct "master class" rehearsals with the guys. You see me pictured above at the new Mory's with two of my great heros, Dave Bass and Chan Everett who ran these rehearsals. We dined together, swapped tales and songs and even entertained the patrons at Mory's as we used to as undergraduates. Cups were passed. Some magic began to kick in.

Singing as One

We had a more in-depth master class rehearsal the second day and really started to sing like something of a unit. Dynamics were happening, the chords were truing up, the sound was producing goose bumps. At dinner that evening, we sang between courses and this time the songs sounded more solid, more developed. We even tried a few songs we had not rehearsed and pulled off at least one song I did not dream possible. We were singing again!

Reconnecting

Then we took our stuff to meet the young men of the current group. We met at the SOB house where many of them live, circled up in the backyard, eyeballed each other for a bit and then started swapping tunes. Eventually, we sang some together. The young men met some of their idols and legends of the past. They got to shake hands with some of the best arrangers and most clever jokers of the groups history and hear some songs they did not know existed. The old guys got regaled by some stunning voices singing both old songs and new, and suddenly it all seemed really cool. We met a couple of the guys we'll be seeing on TV this fall on the next NBC "Sing Off" series. We had Sam Weisman, producer of that show singing baritone on our team. These guys are stars, but first of all they are just good kids who love to sing, just like us. We all realized how much singing connected us to good friends and fun, making it possible to handle the stress of Yale and the demands of life. We all felt like we belonged together. We found the connection to the living tradition that had been broken for many of us.