We turned off the Panorama Trail in Andrew Molera State Park into a stand of stunted redwoods. They were thin trees, nothing like the redwoods you usually see, and their sparse leafy heads waved at the sky, creaking like a porch-row of rocking chairs. We looked up to see their leaves dissolving into sunlight, and listened to them lean this way and that in time to a silent song.

I had the same feeling sitting in rehearsal on Sunday evening while the basses and tenors sang an old Irish song -- the feeling that music itself was growing up out of the earth, slender stalks of sound deeply rooted and fragile and reaching for the light.