Christina Cichos: Living a Life in Music
Christina Cichos’ Biography:
Christina is a musician and an avid lover for all things music. Christina is currently working in multiple different music communities here in Vancouver, sprinkling her passion for music into every corner of her life. If she could describe herself as a ride in an amusement park, she would be the pirate ship because she is an individual who feels deeply for both the highs and lows of life. Despite her strong emotions, she never stays in one emotion for too long and looks towards the future in an optimistic view. This trait extends to her work even amidst the pandemic. Keep reading for a morsel of Christina’s story.
My name is Christina and I do lots of things within the musical community in Vancouver. I mostly work with the choral community here in Vancouver so I spend most of my time working with choirs. Before I started working, I got a degree in voice performance from UBC and I graduated in 2012. When I sing, I sing soprano so I sing up high in a choir. Now, I work in a couple of different musical organizations within this community.
One of the things I do is that I am the operations coordinator for the Vancouver Bach Family of Choirs. In that position, I help organize all the concerts for kids at all different levels and also concerts for adult choirs as well. Most of my time in this position is spent organizing the kids’ concerts though. As well, I help the administration with registration, help get music ready for the choirs, and make sure things are organized for rehearsals. I guess this job would be the closest thing you would get to a desk job in the choir world.
I also do a few things at a church called Pacific Spirit United Church in Kerrisdale. The first position I hold there is as a lead for their Sunday choir. Here, I sing as a soprano which means that I sing solos when the occasion comes up and I also act as an anchor for my section when we have our normal choir. Since I have a strong voice and I learn the music quickly, I also help support all the other members of my section to learn their music and provide a core for our choir sound. Alongside being the lead for the Sunday choir, I also help conduct a children’s choir as well. Normally in this job, I help conduct this children’s choir for services, provide coaching for the kids, and help run a summer camp for them.
I am also a professional singer and I sing in the Vancouver Chamber Choir in which I sing as a soprano as well. Additionally, I occasionally substitute for my friends at churches if they are unavailable and sing at weddings too.
Looking back, I think I have kind of been involved in choir all my life. I started as soon as I could, getting involved as early as grade one or two when my music teacher from elementary school suggested my parents put me in a choir because I seemed to love singing. Soon after, my parents had me join this children’s choir that operated out of Coquitlam. I then sang with them for about another five years moving within their different levels and choirs. I was just very involved in all things to do with music. For example, I participated in band in high school, sang in all the choirs, sang in all the musicals… teachers eventually started suggesting to me that I should study music in the future because I loved it so much. An event that inspired me to pursue music professionally was when I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when I was sixteen–watching that musical made me feel like I wanted to be Christine Daaé! Of course, I don’t actually want to be Christine Daaé anymore but this experience really made me consider studying singing seriously. This decision was definitely also impacted by the fact that I have basically always been in a choir except for a couple of months between when I graduated University and I started singing up in another choir. Choir has just always been there for me.
It’s funny because if you ask me at the different periods of my life I would have said that I didn’t always know what I wanted to do but when I look back in hindsight, I think I always did. I have always been drawn to things that are music-oriented and while I may not have pictured myself having four regular jobs in order to pursue this passion, I think being involved in music was the thing for me.
What are some challenges you have had to face?
I think it’s interesting because people don't always see all of the work that the singers put into each performance behind the scenes. When people go to see a concert, they are always getting the finished product and while we certainly have people who sometimes come and visit our chamber choir rehearsals, it is hard to understand all the work that goes into the full rehearsal process when preparing for a concert. My colleagues and I often spend a lot of time at home figuring out and preparing new languages for example. We often sing pieces that are not in English so there is a lot more extra preparation such as pronunciation and expressiveness that goes into each performance. I even had to take a special university language course at one point! There is just a lot of preparation that happens before we even get to the concert stage.
Scheduling and planning is also a big part of what you have to do when you work in the nonprofit or arts and performance sectors–there is never one exact schedule. Unlike nine-to-five desk jobs, we have to take on multiple different roles and gigs to make our income so as a result, I have to make sure I am really organized and stay on top of everything. For instance, one day I have work for a certain choir and the next day, I am gone working on my singing and I constantly have to travel all around the city to fulfill my responsibilities. On top of that, I have to make sure I find time to practice. And it’s not like just sitting down and making sure I know all the notes, rather I have to make sure that I am sitting properly, my postures healthy, and that I am breathing nicely. It is like when you have to stretch before you workout. In order to make sure your voice maintains its quality, you have to put time into it otherwise you will lose the agility that maybe you would have had before. On the other hand, I also make my own invoices for just about all of my jobs so I have to keep track of the hours that I've worked and make many Excel sheets to send out to people–it’s truly a lot of work behind the scenes. Subsequently, guaranteeing that everything is scheduled properly and correctly is quite a difficult task.
With these challenges, I think it's natural for people in my career path to occasionally feel like it is too much or wanting to quit. Take me as an example: I have a little bit of a perfectionist streak, probably combined with some imposter syndrome, so for me, I always care a lot about doing a good job. I care about supporting the people around me which in turn, places a lot of pressure on myself to be really good and really right all the time. Especially around Christmas time when all of the concerts are happening at once, it tends to get a little bit overwhelming. Even after working in this field for a couple of years now, these are still things I have to deal with. In situations where things get a bit overwhelming, I try to turn to my colleagues and find inspiration in what they do. All of them, whether it be my colleagues in the Vancouver chamber choir, my colleagues at the box office, or my colleagues at my church job, these people keep coming back to music. Their passion keeps others making music as well and I know that if they can do it, I can do it too. I guess it’s important to remember to just forgive myself when I'm feeling overly perfectionist–I mean, they haven't kicked me out yet so it must mean that I belong here and so I am going to keep going at it!
Also, if I am being honest, there is no greater joy for me than singing with other human beings and working together for that intensely focussed period of time during rehearsals to present something for other people. That is such a great joy that I have missed during these pandemic days and I know that I could not live my life without some form of a choir. I just would not be able to do it.
How has the pandemic impacted you?
During these pandemic days, I have been working mostly for my office/admin position in the Bach choir. Since I have a certain amount of hours I have to get done in a week, these days I like to front-load them because I don't have all of my other responsibilities. So right now, a typical work week for me looks like working three and a half days, Monday through Thursday. Every day, I wake up at 7:30 in the morning, get ready for the day, and go to the office. At the end of the day, I come home, make dinner, go for a walk, and watch some TV—I certainly have caught up on a lot of TV! Recently at work, I have been getting a lot of good tidying and research done which is good, however, I have not had the same busy schedule that I had before and I kind of miss it!
There have been some changes in how we work and operate in my jobs as well. With the Vancouver Bach children's choir for example, in March, we transitioned all of the choir rehearsals to online rehearsals. It has been difficult though because the kids can't quite all sing together unmuted due to the digital lag and other technical issues. The Vancouver Chamber Choir has also tried to get all of us together virtually so we’re still connected despite our season getting cancelled. My church choir even did a couple of virtual hymns where our music director put together a guidance track and everything! I guess we have been able to somewhat do and adapt to the current situation but nothing is really the same. Of course, there is no substitute to live singing with people but we have managed to make things work with what we’ve got.
There have definitely been some challenges as well. For starters, technology was a huge challenge. I mean, I have got my computer, my tablet, and my phone but I have always kind of been a surface-level tech person. I know how to use those things but that's about it! The pandemic has just been a lot of having to learn the ins-and-outs of something like Zoom, having to get better at understanding microphones and cameras, learning how to use recording technology–I think that is going to be our future! And as much as learning all that new stuff kind of freaks me out, I know I am going to have to put some time in figuring that out.
I guess the challenge right now is that we still have not quite decided what is the best way to sing together safely with lots of people. We really just have to be patient until we get that figured out. I for sure miss that though because part of my social time is also when I am singing with others and we just can not get together in groups right now. So I have not only missed the music-making but also the social aspect of my job as well. So now we just have to patiently wait for more research and papers to be published and try to stay positive.
Despite these challenges, whenever I remember those moments where for example my choir has sung a beautiful chord or when I see a smile in the audience, I always feel like my patience and hard work is worth it. Just this morning, I substituted for my friend singing at Holy Rosary Cathedral this morning and it was the first time I had sung in harmony in a long time. Even just that feeling of singing in harmony or singing a piece that I have done hundreds of times, as long as I am singing with other people and it sounds good, it is a wonderful feeling.
During these unprecedented times, I have become very thankful for the small things in my life. Take my job at the Bach Choir as an example. Having that job really kept me going and I was really lucky that when all the other stuff either got cancelled, closed down or reduced hours, my Bach position just kept going. I could still work every day doing either research projects or at-home preparation so I am really grateful to have that as a stabilizer in my life. It took some time to find at least one position that is really stable year-round thus I am so grateful to have that stability to anchor everything else around.
What is your biggest fear?
Failure. And or rejection. I feel like they tie in together with each other but one of the biggest challenges that I faced in the first year that I joined the Vancouver Chamber Choir was that I was very timid. However, in most professional choirs that I have sung in, it is a habit that if you are singing in rehearsal and you make a mistake, and you know you have made a mistake, you have to put your hand up so the conductor knows you know to fix it. It took me a lot of self-build and guts to be able to publicly admit that I had made a mistake.
Having this fear is hard at times because, in the music world, auditions are inevitable and I hate them. I don’t think anybody really loves auditioning but sometimes you just have to put yourself out there. Whenever you audition though, there is always a chance someone will say no. It is not personal or anything, sometimes your voice just doesn’t suit what they’re looking for but it is still tough!
What is something you would tell your younger self?
If I could tell my younger self one thing, I think I would tell her to stop being so worried about what other people think because they are not really judging you the way you think they are. Just keep going and keep singing because that is what you love.
