function embedAudio ( block, source ) { if( navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“MSIE”) != -1 ) mimetype = “audio/mp3”; else mimetype = “audio/mpeg”; document.getElementById( block ).innerHTML = “\ \ \ \ \ \ Trouble playing the file? Click here. \ \ “; }
Hear a sampleArticle from Living Magazine, Spring 2007
The sound these 40 valley adolescents have worked to perfect, even in an informal rehearsal, is spine tingling.
It’s a Monday evening in February with temperatures plummeting to six degrees and you just want to cozy up at home. But parents faithfully squire some 230 young choristers of the various groupings of the Shenandoah Valley Children’s Choir (SVCC) to rehearsals at Eastern Mennonite University between the hours of 4:30-8:15 p.m. Book bags, colorful coats and scarves pile up outside Martin Chapel, renowned for its superb choral acoustics.
On this night the children are not all scrubbed and slicked down wearing their trademark plaid vests and bow ties, or their White House-ready bright red ponchos and black berets. They are in jeans, layers of T-shirts, sweaters, and tennis shoes – some the latest wheely variety. They are Monday-evening-tired after a long day of school and whatever other lessons and activities they have squeezed in. Some have scarfed down sandwiches in the minivan on the way – some from as far away as West Virginia. Some gather around a dutiful mom opening a small cooler with supper or wholesome snacks.
Step inside Martin Chapel, though, and the visionary founder and artistic director of the 15 year old organization, Julia White, is not just directing a choir of 40 (in this group) willing youngsters. From the minute you step in the hall, Mrs. White (as the children call her) goes from teacher to friend to conductor to mentor to disciplinarian to soloist as she models just how a particular trill is supposed to sound. It may be the tail end of a busy Monday, but White is sharply dressed in a neat hounds tooth jacket and black slacks, the very image of a successful business woman.
Though children whisper and wiggle in lulls between working on a difficult measure (and are free to leave the hall without asking if they must use the restroom), the children stay on task like they realize they are the ones who have auditioned for the chance to be here, and waited nervously for an acceptance letter. Their parents pay tuition for them to not just sing in a choir but be drilled in scales, diction, ear training and much more. “Younger brothers and sisters of bigger choristers can’t wait to join the choir and get their uniforms and T-shirts,” White noted.
Tonight White is working on diction with the Treble Choir, children ages10-16 who have graduated from the younger Preparatory Choir and are now expected to master intermediate musicianship skills. “Have you ever tried to say something and it didn’t come out right?” she asks with a smile. The children nod and one raises her hand, but White realizes she doesn’t really want a long story from a child about such an experience just now. “Don’t tell me now,” she not-unkindly dismisses the raised hand, and continues to make her point about opening their mouths to make the sound fuller.
In the next passage of music White wants the children to lean into a phrase and make the music increase slightly in energy and volume, so they move their arms and hands around in a whirling motion to remind them how to keep supporting their breath. In teaching young children the skills of professional adult musicians, White, with a master of music degree from Westminster Choir College, Princeton (NJ) where she specialized in children’s choirs, employs fun devices such as “Freddie.” Freddie is a sliced-open tennis ball which she squeezes on the sides so it opens its mouth to good naturedly remind the children how to produce a fuller sound. A slumped over Slinky reminds them again to sit up straight so that their torsos (and singing) are not squished.
The sound these 40 valley adolescents have worked to perfect, even in an informal rehearsal, is spine tingling. The high, clear tones reverberate off the walls of Martin Chapel as though it was an ancient Gothic cathedral. “Oh, that gives me shivers,” White tells the children at one point. “Those of you who have worked with me for many years know that is a high compliment. It was beautiful.”
She gives instructions for next week. “I want to hear the text. I expect next week for it to be memorized. Well. How many of you want to do better on the memory part?” she asks the children like a motivational speaker. Most raise their hands. “For those of you who have already memorized it, how did you do it?” she drills, so they hear it from their peers.
“I just practiced a lot,” says one blonde girl with a pulled back ponytail.
“I picked certain days that I would work on it,” says another. White nods, affirming their different ideas. “It is just human nature to want to go over the part that we know well, because we like to do well. But you need to go over the part that is hard for you,” she emphasizes.
After working on a solemn religious number, the children smile while tackling a lighter French tongue-twister song. Occasionally everyone points high to the ceiling, the better to reach the high notes. For the most part, the children follow White’s every move and motion. If someone drifts off, she quickly brings them back with a “please stop” said with a smile or a wink. “Look at the dynamic marking on that,” White switches back to teaching. “What is that?”
“Pianissimo,” one child supplies.
A few minutes later she calls one group back to attention, “You went to sleep. Don’t just sing blindly, don’t just plow right through. I’m trying to grow thinking musicians,” she reminds them, “not just people who sing anything.”
At this point in rehearsal, the Preparatory Choir of younger children ages 8-11 who have been practicing elsewhere file in quietly while the older group continues singing, undistracted, for a joint rehearsal. Each child totes a SVCC-logoed bag of musical literature. When they finish rehearsing, after a half hour break, the oldest group, the Concert Choir of 71 advanced choristers ages 11-18, fills the hall. The middle and high schoolers are able to sing music in 2-4 parts including music from other languages and cultures, and more advanced repertoire. Weekly assignments build on the skills learned in the Preparatory and Treble Choirs, including ear training, sight singing, and note and rhythm reading. Using the Solfege method devised by English music educator John Curwen and modified by Hungarian Zoltan Kodaly, the children use hand signs and learn to sight sing with a weekly lesson designed and taught by assistant director Joy Anderson. Anderson has designed a whole curriculum of Solfege lessons which are soon to be published, White noted.
In other words, all that gorgeous music you hear in a concert or on one of their nine CDs or when they sing with the world-renowned American Boychoir (as they did again Feb. 17), doesn’t just happen. This is a musical education program for children
who study and practice intricate, highly technical music sometimes for ten or more years, a program that could be at Princeton or Washington D.C or Toronto or Chicago but is right here in the Shenandoah Valley. A fact which sometimes drives director White to frustration: “We are invited [and must audition] to sing at the White House or Carnegie Hall or a music festival in Italy, and people right here don’t even know about us or don’t bother to come to concerts.”
Although the Christmas concerts were sold out, ticket sales and tuition are inadequate to fund all of what has gradually grown from 37 to 227 children and a full-fledged professional arts organization with two full and three part time staff including: Anderson, assistant director, a trained Kodaly instructor with wide experience who teaches five Explorer classes and directs the Preparatory Choir; Maurita Eberly, principal accompanist, who has studied and taught extensively in Italy; Judy Leaman, choir manager for 12 years; and Linda Hatcher, office assistant.
SVCC has a partnership with EMU which gives them rehearsal, performance, and office space among other services, for which EMU receives 10 percent of tuition charges. But the program is independent of the college and gets no outright funding as such. Music majors at the university are able to complete internships assisting with younger classes. Parents volunteer to help with a multitude of tasks from chaperoning to taking roll.
Money for the program was so tight “we almost folded two years ago,” said White. She realized the choir had not been effectively communicating its financial needs when one couple innocently asked why the choir was selling gift-wrap to raise operating money. A few individuals came through with specific donations in that crisis and Fairfield Technologies established a matching incentive donor program. It was a watershed moment which made White realize they had to be more open about letting people know that the SVCC is like any other professional arts organization which continually struggles for money to stay afloat.
If there is any criticism of the choir, it is that it is “too white.” Children of color who participate are often adoptees of Anglo families, a situation White would love to change. But some of the issues are income, transportation, and simply attending a concert before trying out. “We offer some tuition assistance and make free tickets available, but if parents can’t bring them, arranging logistics for transportation even through programs like the Boys and Girls Club of Harrisonburg have proved too big of hurdle” at the current time. If more volunteers stepped forward to help provide consistent transportation, perhaps the choir could be more diverse, White notes.
The fact that the SVCC is celebrating 15 years of existence this year gives White pause: pause to “feel old” as many of her proteges have spent their whole childhoods with her and gone on to careers in music education, performance or just to have their lives enriched by fuller music appreciation as adults, and spread this love to their children. “It is our hope to continue to offer our program to many more children in the valley and to be a model nationwide for other community choirs,” says White. “Excellence in music education can be created anywhere, not just in the major metropolitan areas. We hope we can continue to exist for many more years to come.”
Parents and students reflect: “Learning not just music, but life lessons”
“I don’t ever want the choir to not be,” Rene Leetun, says that her 14-year-old son, Jack, recently said of Shenandoah Valley Children’s Choir. Rene (pronounced like Irene without the “I”) has two other children in the choir, Joni, 13 and Jane, 11, and the three homeschooled children have each participated from the age of 6 or 7. “Mrs. White needs to be teaching others how to do this,” Jack went on.
Rene says that when she first went to watch the choir perform, “It was impressive but with little musical background myself, I didn’t know what I was appreciating.” But after Jack began she learned along with the children as she “would sit in classes and watch Mrs. White break musical concepts down into fundamental components – and make it fun – kind of teaching the grammar of music.” While the Leetuns also had piano lessons, in the choirs they were learning all aspects of music and “learning to do something well and not just settle for mediocre,” said Rene.
Daughter Joni has been appointed as a head chorister, (a section leader), and the Leetuns are glad for the leadership skills and attention to details this teaches, Rene noted.
Her husband, Keith, chaperoned one trip to Norfolk when the choir sang for a convention of music teachers. Not being musically experienced himself, there he heard first hand the comments of the teachers about the musicality, professionalism and apparent joy of the SVCC in sharing their music. “It had been a little hard to put out the expenditure,” Rene reflected, “but when he heard these comments he realized more just how good the choir really was.”
There is no shortage of this kind of genuine comment. Judges for festivals and competitions are normally reserved in their response, but last year at the Heritage Children’s Choir Festival in New York City, Judith Willoughby of Oklahoma City University and a 9-year judge for the festival, spontaneously stood after the SVCC performance. “I’m speechless,” she was quoted as saying. “I’m standing and I’ve never stood for a choir.” She gave the choir a hard-to-earn “100” perfect score. Another judge, Jean Ashworth Bartle, director of the Toronto Children’s Choir said she wept at “such fantastic singing. A glorious sound. I’ve judged 1000 choirs and this is remarkable.”
But the children are in it for more than weeping judges and standing ovations. Most hear about the choir from friends who have enjoyed it, and when asked what she enjoys most, Joni Leetun says, “It’s given me the opportunity to get to know all sorts of different people; I have really good friends in the choir. I’ve learned sight reading and sight singing – which is hearing a piece of music in my head just looking at it.” The homeschooled 7th grader also studies piano and flute and when asked what drawbacks there are to being in the choir, at first couldn’t really think of any. “Well a couple years ago it was a lot of work, but it taught me discipline.”
Sarah Wingard has been in the program for nine years and is currently one of the lead soloists for the Concert choir. At Christmas she sang a goose-bump producing rendition of the high-noted “Gesu Bambino” (Infant Jesus) classic carol, but she models the SVCC spirit and gains experience by helping out with the youngest “Explorers” class. The five classes consist of children in kindergarten through third grade, frequently siblings of older choristers who “need something to do” while their big sisters or brothers are practicing. “The little kids really look up to the big kids,” says White.
Heidi Logan was in the program for ten years and is now a freshman at James Madison University and is considering majoring in music. She said that the program taught her a lot about commitment and priorities, “putting one thing first.” Emily Foster, who is a junior music major at JMU said that the single most valuable lesson she learned from her three years in the choir was White’s frequent phrase, “There is no replacement for hard work.” Now as a music major, Foster has “adopted Ms. White’s phrase as my personal motto. I owe my thanks to the choir for teaching me musical as well as life lessons.”