I’ll tell you now, I was mighty glad to see cushions on the pews. My ecumenical sorties into various churches and cathedrals don’t include memories of cushions. I admit it, when I walked up the aisle, I briefly succumbed to a moment of irrational fear; a fear of ass-numbing angst combined with childhood memories of church-induced narcolepsy. More so, I’m usually not one for choral groups, nor cathedrals for that matter – unless, of course, they have flying buttresses (the cathedrals, not the choral groups.)

I am quite fond of flying buttresses. I think I just like saying the words “flying buttress” — it has such a nice ring to it. Unfortunately, they’re not something that comes up often in casual conversation. It’s a shame. Someday, I’ll get to work it into a conversation. “Nice flying buttress you’ve got there,” I’ll say. “I dig the arches, man.”

Nevertheless, given the lack of flying buttresses, it was a surprise to find myself, in a cathedral, waiting for a choral performance. Little did I know I was in for a pleasant surprise, as good — perhaps even better — than a flying buttress.

As chance would have it, you see, I was at loose ends that particular evening in San Francisco. Chance is that way sometimes. So, when a friend offered a ticket I jumped. I’m a firm believer that opportunities not taken are opportunities lost. I despise lost opportunities. Moreover, it was this or cool my heels in that god-forsaken suburban wasteland known as Santa Clara. After a few trips to Santa Clara, my (somewhat) irrational fear of ending my years in a trailer park has been supplanted with an irrational fear of ending up as cubical monkey in Santa Clara or, worse yet, Palo Alto (shudder). The weather is nice though.

So it was chance — and the offer of dinner and a ticket — that brought me to hear the vocal sounds of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares – once known as “The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir.” (Obviously, they have wisely replaced their Soviet PR firm, Merrill, Lynch, Sacco, Vanzetti, and Brezhnev.)

Truly, there is magic in the human voice, a magic I like. Those who know me know I love the sultry sounds of jazz and blues, singers like Madeline Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nellie McKay; and Diana Krall. I even like Celtic Woman. There I fault genetic memory. I figure it stirs my Celtic genes or something. It makes me want to put on a kilt, drink mead, marry a red-headed woman, and swing a Claymore, not necessarily in that order. It makes me actually like the sound of bagpipes — a true sign of genetic insanity at its most fundamental.

I always figured the attraction was that, as a human, I am biased towards the sounds of other humans. (Despite what you may have heard, and despite liking the sounds of bagpipes, I am human. I have the papers to prove it.) But, even with that bias, choral music is a stretch. I learned otherwise.

There is another magic that happens when the human voice twists and turns, wafting in and out of phase with other voices, waves and frequencies ebbing, flowing and colliding, dancing with the harmonic resonance of stone and steel. There is a magic in sounds produced by these twenty-four Bulgarian women; women who sing in amazing dissonance and harmony, crossing phase, droning and even chirping.

As the choir — 24 eclectically sized, shaped and aged women — sang, I heard woodwinds, and strings, and even the harmonic drone of a bag pipes. I heard the basso profundo of the bassoon, and the weedy trill of the clarinet. I heard the drag of a bow across the cellos midriff. I heard the wind, I heard the sounds of a village market, the sounds of love lost and found, and the sounds of a people tossed and turned on the juxtaposition of Europe and Asia. Yet, there were no instruments, no woodwinds, no strings; only the sound of the human voice; the voice as instrument.

In their voices, I heard a rich quilt of sounds and images, harmonic and dissonant, at once alien and yet with a familiarity I could taste. One could almost see the waves of sound cascade off the gothic fanned arches of the cathedral’s ceiling and ricochet off the pillars to vibrate the stain glass windows. I’d swear – when the currents of dissonance and harmony collided, I could feel it in my teeth as well as my soul.

In their voices, was the sound of the wind as it swept out of the Carpathians; in their voices was the call of the Muezzin wafting out of the Middle East, across Turkey, into the heart of Bulgaria. In their voices were the gentle chirped murmurs of a village market; in their voices was the call of the power and universal anguish of love and courtship, echoing across time. There was even a dissonance in the translated titles of the songs: these were top-forty Bulgarian hits that spoke volumes in name alone; songs with names like “The Old Lady is Growing Onion,” “I Feel Sleepy, I Want to Go to Bed,” and “Pigeons are Cooing.” Their simple song, in complex voice, was a beauty beyond; a sum greater than the individual parts. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the chords cascade; bouncing and echoing across time and space – the harmonic resonance of grace against stone and steel.