"I remember when I was little, well, in high school, and I was lying on the floor listening to an old record of Handel’s Messiah that Shaw had conducted in the 60s. After the overture the first thing that comes in is the tenor with “Comfort ye...” and I was lying on the floor just thinking that was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. I wanted to do that one day. Then, full circle, I got to sing for Shaw - his last Messiah that he did for the Symphony Chorus. When you auditioned you never knew if he was in the room or not because they had this big black scrim with people behind it. Well, he was in there, and I auditioned with music from Messiah, and he supposedly really loved my voice and wanted me to do the solo the next year. He died before it happened, but it was neat to come full circle. I don’t know if I would have been able to do the solos - I get goosebumps just thinking about it. I probably would’ve burst into tears, it would’ve been overwhelming, emotionally, to stand there and be doing what I had heard 20 years before."

DeWayne Trainer: tenor with the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, project leader at Edward Jones