A small town had a choir of nine singers, and they were out of tune and out of time. Three weeks before the regional choir festival, the old conductor retired. The town sent Ms. Ferro, a woman of forty.
On the first night she wrote on the board: "I am deaf. I will not hear you. You will have to watch me." The nine whispered: how could a deaf woman conduct? But she made them take off their shoes and stand on the wooden stage. She felt the beat through the floor and through her hand on the piano lid, and she taught them to feel it too. She taught them to watch her hands, her breathing and her eyebrows instead of their sheet music.
They hated it for a week, and then something changed. They began to sing together, breathing together, as if nine separate breaths had learned to be one.
On the night of the festival there were four hundred people in the hall. At the last moment the pianist had fallen ill with a cold, so the nine had to begin with no instrument and no starting note. Ms. Ferro lifted her hands. Nine pairs of eyes were on her. They breathed in at the same moment and sang.
In the back row sat twelve deaf children from the school in the next town, each holding a balloon on their lap to feel the music. When the song ended, they stood and waved their hands in the air, the way deaf people applaud. Ms. Ferro saw the forest of hands from the stage. It was the loudest applause she had ever heard.
