Mysteries are stupid

By ​Brian Chan, Tenor, Magnolia Chorale

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To me, mysteries present more challenges than solutions. They represent the kinds of ambiguity in my personal life that I have always had to navigate alone, and that gives me no pleasure, to put it mildly.

Upon hearing that Magnolia Chorale’s December concerts were titled “From Mystery to Majesty,” I winced. “What an oxymoron,” I thought to myself. No mysteries could ever be paired with such enlightening and positive terms as majesty, and to imply that the mysterious can lead to the majestic simply felt dichotomous to me.
Alas, was I so wrong about it all.

With this fall season being my first time joining the Chorale, everything about the ensemble was scarily mysterious to me. Was it the right choice to join this particular community choir? Would I like the pieces that we would perform? How would I fit into this massive group of people, most of whom do not even share my identities and backgrounds?
In a previous blog post, a fellow Chorale member explained that a lot of us felt “skeptical” towards one of the pieces chosen for the December concerts. It would span half of our programming, and to spend much of our rehearsals figuring out the rather whimsical and mysterious key changes and harmonic dissonances was exhausting. To perform that piece in public was like balancing knives on a rolling globe—one small mistake and the whole act would come apart.

And to ponder whether anyone in my community would attend either concert to support me and the Chorale made me even more lethargic. In school, hardly anyone in my rather small social circle would ever see me in concert. As much as I always wished that someone would cheer me on in the audience, I always claimed that those concerts were merely insignificant school activities. The same attitude carried through into my adulthood; as such, I kept my expectations low for having any communal support.

However troubling those thoughts were in my head, as I stood on the risers, I found that all the confusion around the music and the overwhelming internal dialogues vanished during one of the most exuberant and fulfilling concerts I have ever been a part of.
Putting together months of hard work and vocalizing all the strange chords across all voice parts in a grand venue felt simultaneously cerebral and emotional. Feeding off of my fellow Chorale members’ excitement towards being on stage and performing for such huge and visibly ecstatic crowds even gave me some ostensible lightness on my feet. (My actual feet, however, were very heavy and sore from being contorted by a pair of secondhand dress shoes that I bought from a stranger online).

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Magnolia Chorale December 2025 concert.

And to my surprise, a few friends in my chosen family attended the concerts and even brought me flowers! What’s more, the words of encouragement from my friends and other singers in the Chorale confirmed to me that I made the right choice by joining this choir. “That was amazing!”, “It sounded like I was in heaven,” and “The choir is so much better with you here,” are just some of what these folks have said to me after our performances. To say that my heart was warm after hearing all that would be an understatement.
Perhaps mysteries are indeed stupid, but in this instance, the mysteries were stupid fun. And with the right people, solving these mysteries might just lead us into the most serendipitous unknowns we have yet to encounter.
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If you have read this far, consider joining me and dozens of other folks from all walks of life on January 25, 2026, for our first rehearsal of the spring semester. By embracing the unknown in choral singing, we can turn mystery into majesty together.