Greetings all!

My how time marches on! It is hard to believe that eight years have already gone by since my retirement as Artistic Director. It has been nine years since Ingrid and I relocated to Charleston, but even harder to believe is that we are about to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Concert Singers of Cary! I cannot tell you how proud I am to be one of its founders. My heart felt congratulations to not only everyone associated with the Concert Singers of Cary on this celebration of thirty-five years of making fabulous music, but also to Nathan Leaf on his outstanding eight-year tenure as Artistic Director.

Over this past summer, while discussing the upcoming anniversary with Stacy Hanna, the current Board Chair of the Concert Singers of Cary, Stacy asked me if I would be interested in writing a blog on the origins and early years of the Concert Singers. Having a trove of wonderful memories and noteworthy experiences from the past 35 years, I happily agreed.

After nearly a decade of professional singing and conducting work in my hometown of Philadelphia, it was time to move on. I felt my singing work had hit a ceiling, and I now had a young family to raise. North Carolina, the state where I had started my career, was where I wanted to return to, and the more I learned about the town of Cary, the more I felt that was the place I wanted to settle down in and raise my family. In July of 1989 I was fortunate enough to apply and be accepted for the fulltime position of Director of Music Ministries at White Plains United Methodist Church in Cary. 

One of the choir members at the church, Barbara Brown, explained to me that the Town of Cary was calling for proposals to increase offerings in all phases of the arts and asked if I would come to an open meeting to speak about community choruses. Since I had experience in establishing a group in Pennsylvania, I agreed to attend and speak about the viability of a community group. At that time, Cary was a ridiculously young, tech-driven community with about 44,000 residents. My recollection is that the average age of the work force was in the low 30’s. It seemed to me that the timing and conditions might be right for a year-round community chorus. 

Prior to the actual meeting, I was introduced to Mable Howell, the chair of the newly established Cary Cultural Arts Commission. Shortly after the meeting with them, I was asked to serve on a planning committee to launch a community choral effort. The committee was made up of myself, Mable Howell, Barbara Brown, Fuller Blunt (a retired high school vocal music teacher and music supervisor recently moved from Long Island), and Sarah Sheffield (the Program Supervisor for the Cary Parks and Rec Department). Sarah was a key player in the establishment of the Fine Arts League of Cary. It turned out to be a great group with a diversity of skills and experiences. We were to create a specific proposal that had a mission statement and budget for consideration by spring of 1991. We agreed to meet monthly over lunch to develop a plan. 

The most pressing issue was applying for our status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so that we could attract donors and sponsors to our budget. Back then it was a very tedious process involving a good bit of paperwork. Today it is much easier and done online. Thankfully, Fuller Blunt volunteered to head up this effort, and with the help of legal and accounting professionals we were ready in a few months. 

Next came the many questions that needed to be answered: What size chorus group were we anticipating, were the chorus applicants to go through an audition and if so, at what level? If it was to be an adult chorus, did that include students and if so, at what age would they be eligible? How many concerts should we plan for, where could they be held and what sort of music should we become known for? At that time the only performance spaces available in Cary were in churches and schools. We were free to choose from a wide variety of music styles: Pops, Secular, Classical, Sacred to name a few, but which ones? Should we try to answer some of these questions by fitting ourselves into the mosaic around existing groups in the area or should we make our own way? We decided to go our own way.

In 1990 the Triangle had a total population of slightly less than 900,000 without a single city center. Today the population is over 2.2 million. After meeting monthly through the spring of 1991, it was decided that with established year round choruses already present in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, we would place our focus on the Cary/Apex/Morrisville area but would welcome anyone who wanted to participate. We agreed that stylistically, we would embrace “all styles and musical traditions” and included that wording in our bylaws. We agreed to my suggestion of the name “Concert Singers of Cary” which implied that we were stylistically undefined, collaborative and based in Cary. I was appointed by the committee to conduct the first concert with Sarah Rogers being selected as accompanist. We were ready to go!

In consultation with the Cultural Arts Committee and mayor Koka Booth, we determined we would audition in August of 1991 and be ready for our first concert on Sunday, October 20th at 3:00pm. The performance would take place at the opening ceremonies of the newly completed Cary Community Center, now called the Herb Young Center. It was to consist of Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana”, a series of seven poems set to music by the American poet Robert Frost. We planned to rent a grand piano to accompany the choir. But first came the auditions!

I must confess. Making a commitment to provide music for a major community event, using a choir that did not yet exist, was more than a bit unnerving. Fuller Blunt and I were put in charge of the auditions. We were hoping to attract about 40-45 singers at open auditions, and we had two nights in which to do so. The first night had a nice group of applicants which increased in size as the evening progressed. We accepted sixty-seven singers the first night and an additional sixteen the next night. Suddenly we had a group large enough to be called a Symphonic Choir. The balance was off. We had a three to one ratio of women to men, but we were thrilled with the turnout!

After reporting the results to the Cary leadership, we set about to see if there might be funding to support the hiring of an orchestra instead of renting a grand piano. This would enhance the work of the choir and give us the option of expanding the program to include instrumental works. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the Town of Cary and Bruce and Mable Howell, all made contributions that enabled us to hire twenty-eight members of the North Carolina Symphony for the performance. This enabled us to include additional works by Bach, Mozart and Barber.

The performance was a fabulous success that immediately put the Concert Singers of Cary on the map! Mayor Koka Booth and the town leadership were quite pleased with the result. The committee had worked so hard for more than a year to study, design and launch the Concert Singers of Cary. When we were frequently asked at the post-concert reception and for days after the concert “What are you going to do next?” …we didn’t really have an answer, although we did say all the right things. In private, Fuller and I looked at each other and simultaneously asked, “Now what?”