Thirty years ago I sat in a sunlit Michigan choir room every day and dropped my jaw, breathed deep into my pelvis, hung on every word he said. Literally. I took copious notes in my music, as he used metaphor after metaphor in an attempt to guide us in allowing the sound he knew we could produce. He wanted perfection, and as a budding perfectionist, I hung on his every word, trying to make him proud.

How we strove to make him proud. How we tried to be channels for the music he heard in his head. Under him, we travelled the world together, collectively falling in love with what it is that music does, with the strange alchemy of singing together under one great man. His brilliance, his matchless method of drawing perfection from our voices, ruined me for singing under anyone else, and I don’t regret it for one second.

Last weekend, I found myself braving the ghosts of my 18-year-old self, stepping foot on my college campus for the first time in decades to sit under this man’s direction one more time, along with 300 others who gathered to celebrate his legacy as he stepped down from a long and resonant career. One more time, I found myself scribbling down every whimsical image he tossed us. One more time, all 300 of us sang the same 5 measures of music over and over, as he shouted instructions from his podium. How delightful to be corrected one more time by him! How precious to be in his presence one more time and to celebrate his singularity.

As I waited to walk onstage last weekend, I noticed a display celebrating his career, and I stopped in my tracks. Included in the display was a framed poem I had written for him when I graduated, thanking him for the profound impact he had on my life. I wove into it his words, the images that had filled the pages of my music, along with the love I had for him and have for him still.

May the love he poured into us return to him a thousandfold.