After singing for 35 years with Berkshire Choral International, Amy Fine is full of stories about her choral adventures. Each story she tells is filled with details, excitement and a passion that is nearly palpable. Some memories she has nailed down to the time and day, and she speaks about the vivid emotions she would feel driving to a particular concert week at Berkshire some years ago as if it had happened just yesterday. It’s pretty safe to say that to Amy, BCI is deeply important to her.

Growing up on Long Island, Amy started out in middle school choir, and sang all the way in to college. Thinking she didn’t have time for it in graduate school and early in her career, she didn’t participate; in her own words, she says of that time, “I was miserable!” It was later on, living in New York, that she came to find out about BCI.

Going through her mail one day, she’d gotten some information from BCI about an upcoming concert, and how to buy tickets. “I didn’t want tickets–I wanted to be on the other side of the podium!” she laughed. Determined to get to that side, she wrote to them, stated her interests, and she got on the list. Soon she was sent a brochure, was signing up for the next concert cycle, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Amy could have sung anywhere—in the shower, in the church or community choir, with friends. But it’s BCI that she returns to, year after year, and now it’s turned in to 35 years. (She’s only taken one year off, when her daughter was born. She’s also donated her time in the past as a board member for BCI.)

The list of things that keep her coming back is not small. “The collaborative aspect, the social aspect, the making a big something out of starting from zero,” she says, excitedly. “All of those things—you start with a bunch of people, some have studied the music, some haven’t. You’ve got a new conductor, and some will treat and interpret music differently than you, and there’s a big adrenaline rush in concert, and even in rehearsals. It’s the adrenaline, it’s the accomplishment, and it’s with friends! Even if they are situational friends. They’re colleagues, there’s a commitment among you that you really can’t replicate. How could you not love something that makes you feel this way?”

It’s not just the friends and the adrenaline that keep her coming back though. There’s something even deeper than that, that many folks can probably relate to. “Music is a powerful way to communicate emotion in a way that speech can’t,” says Amy. She went on to recall a music director of one of the many BCI concerts she sang in, giving her choir a pep talk, and wishing them well. After the usual well wishes he said something that really struck her and resonates to this day.

“He said to us that when we sing, when we perform, we leave this world a little more beautiful than it was before,” recalls Amy, fondly. “I think that’s so incredible. It makes everyone feel so good to be a part of something like that.”