By Edward Reichel
Deseret News music critic
Sunday, May 28, 2000
It's hard to believe, but the Salt Lake Children's Choir is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. Over the past two decades, the choir has become a mainstay on the local music scene, performing with such well-known artists as Frederica von Stade, Marvin Hamlisch and Pete Seeger and recording with groups such as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony.
But one of the choir's biggest triumphs happened last summer when it placed second at the Golden Gate International Children's Choral Competition in Oakland, Calif., where it competed against groups from around the world.
Director Ralph Woodward rehearses with the Salt Lake Children's Choir in preparation for anniversary concert Saturday.
Chuck Wing, Deseret News
Now, the Salt Lake Children's Choir is busy preparing to commemorate its anniversary with a concert Saturday evening in Abravanel Hall. Founder and director Ralph Woodward promises that there will be a lot of audience favorites on the program and that there also will be a few surprises during the course of the evening.
"The program will be kind of typical of what we like to do at this time of year," Woodward told the Deseret News. "I like to begin with fairly classical fare, and we will be doing two or three art songs and maybe one or two selections by Schumann and also a couple of pieces of my own.
"Then we'll sing some folk songs from Wales, Ireland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Tyrol and the Ukraine. And we're going to end the concert with 'A Day in Spring,' which has become our signature piece."
"A Day in Spring" is also the title of the Salt Lake Children's Choir's newest CD. "Some of the pieces that we're doing on the concert are on this album," Woodward said, "and I'm counting on the CD being available at the concert."
The biggest surprise of the anniversary concert will be a performance by an alumni choir made up of former choristers. "So far, we're going to have over 90 in our alumni choir, and we're still getting responses from former members. I just hope we're going to have enough scores for everyone!"
Woodward is thrilled to get such an overwhelming response from these former members. "It's heartwarming for me to have so many come and sing in the alumni choir. We have someone coming here from California and someone else coming from New York. And some of these kids I haven't seen since they left the choir."
Additionally, two members of the alumni choir who have gone on to pursue a career in music will be featured as soloists at this concert. Both Nancy Treu Jepson and Erin Palmer got some of their earliest exposure to music as members of the Salt Lake Children's Choir.
"There have been many (former choristers) who have gone on in music," Woodward said. "Nancy Treu Jepson won the Utah (Metropolitan Opera) auditions a few years ago, and Erin Palmer, who sang in the choir for many years, has a Howard Hansen Scholarship at Eastman School of Music."
Director Ralph Woodward
Chuck Wing, Deseret News
Woodward is reluctant to acknowledge his role in his former choristers' accomplishments. "I can't really take credit for their successes. I try to provide a foundation for the children. I don't encourage them to take voice lessons."
Still, it's apparent that Woodward's approach in teaching the children to sing is the key to their future success in music. "I don't pry it out of them. I think the sound is naturally there. I want to free them so that they can express vocally what nature has provided them.
"During the auditions, I basically look for potential. Most of the children don't have any prior training at all. Some come from musical families, and some play the piano. And sometimes, kids don't sing in tune, but I can usually help them with that on the spot.
"You need to be encouraging to a child. Singing is a birthright, and I want them to sing."
Woodward estimates more than a thousand children have sung in his choir over the past 20 years. But so far, he hasn't had any children of former members in his choir, although by now that has become a distinct possibility.
"That hasn't happened yet," he said, "but I'm sure it's going to happen sooner or later."
The Salt Lake Children's Choir anniversary concert takes place in Abravanel Hall on Saturday, June 3, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, at $8 for general admission and $6 for students and children, are available by calling ArtTix at 801-355-ARTS or 1-888-451-ARTS. Tickets can also be purchased at the ArtTix outlets in Abravanel Hall and the Capitol Theatre and also at Day Murray Music, 4914 S. State, Murray.
For information about this concert or about the Salt Lake Children's Choir, call 801-537-1412.
E-mail: ereichel@desnews.com
Please, visit the Deseret News web site to view the original article.
The
Salt Lake Children's Choir Turns 20
Sunday,
May 28, 2000
Sarah Christensen (left), Drew Babcock and Katelyn Bybee sing in the Salt Lake Children's Choir, directed by Ralph B. Woodward. The choir is preparing for the concert celebrating its 20th anniversary. (Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune) |
BY CATHERINE
REESE NEWTON
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
It may be premature to call the Salt Lake Children's
Choir the granddaddy of children's choirs in the city -- it's 20 years
old -- but the group has survived beyond the expectations of founder-director
Ralph B. Woodward. It is an institution.
About 90 former choir members will share the stage
with the current 85-voice choir Saturday in an anniversary concert at
Salt Lake City's Abravanel Hall. Singers will travel from as far away
as the East Coast. Soloists are two former choristers, Nancy Treu Jepsen
and Erin Palmer.
Some of the alumni, such as Tucson Symphony concertmaster
Bonnie Terry, Chicago-based free-lance flutist Andrew Stamp and North
Layton Junior High choral teacher Melissa Isaacson, made music their careers.
"I owe so much to Mr. Woodward," said Isaacson, 22.
She sang in the Salt Lake Children's Choir for seven years. "The technical
training you get there is just tops. . . . I went to the Children's Choir
concert a couple of weeks ago, and there were little 9-year-olds up onstage
singing this dissonant, weird, hard music. It's amazing what he can do
with these kids."
The choir also shaped Wendy Robertson's choice of career,
but in a different way. Robertson, 20, is majoring in linguistics and
hopes to teach English as a second language. "We often sang in different
languages, and one thing I gained was an ear for different things," she
said. "I learned to love languages in general."
Multicultural repertoire is a Woodward trademark. Saturday's
program, for example, will feature folk songs from Ireland, Wales, France,
Bulgaria, Ukraine, Namibia and the Americas.
Besides sparking her intellectual interest, Robertson
said, the choir shaped her values.
"It has really made a difference in the choices I make,"
she said. "I was not going to be going out joining gangs."
Robertson said she joined the choir at age 7, but dropped
out after six months, feeling "discouraged and overwhelmed." Not long
after, though, she attended a choir concert and "realized how much I wanted
to be up there performing that music." She continued for seven more years.
Trent Oliphant, 30, works as a consulting manager in
New Jersey, but expects music always will be a hobby. Oliphant sang in
the choir from ages 10 to 15; six of his siblings also were members at
one time or another.
"It was something in my life I was able to do well,
and encouraged to do well, just as I started to hit puberty," he said.
"It gave me a sense of identity. And it was a lot of fun."
Woodward said the choir has had several batches of
siblings, and he suspects children of former members will start joining
the ranks soon.
"It's amazing that I've done this so long," he said.
Woodward grew up in a musical home. His father, Ralph
Woodward, is former head of choral studies at Brigham Young University
and former director of the Ralph Woodward Chorale; his mother, the late
Margaret Woodward, taught singing at BYU. His musical training included
singing in his father's BYU a cappella choir that won first prize in the
International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales; he also is an accomplished
horn player whose teachers included the noted German pedagogue Hermann
Baumann.
Woodward's musical and cultural sensibilities were
shaped by travels and studies in Europe and Latin America, including an
LDS Church mission to Brazil and a State Department-sponsored concert
tour of Central and South America. When he returned to the United States
in 1976, he toyed with the idea of starting a children's choir.
"I wanted to provide an alternative to some of the
children's singing I was hearing," he said. "Youngsters are being encouraged
to sing and act like grown-ups."
He knew of a successful boys choir in the area, but
"my sympathy lay with mixed voices," he said. "The sound is sweeter with
both. It's also easier to pull a choir together."
So in fall 1979, he put notices in the Salt Lake City
newspapers recruiting young choristers. "I was awfully intimidated at
the idea of holding myself up as something I wasn't sure I was at that
time," he said.
Woodward laughed as he recalled his early attempts
at uniforms. For the first concert, he borrowed an idea from his mother
and had the children wear their fathers' shirts backward. For the next
concert, he decided to add dark blue bows, so off to the fabric store
he went. Feeling like a fish out of water, he selected a material that
frayed easily. "They walked out there with strings coming off."
Woodward cannot pinpoint when the choir became a full-time
job, but he feels he found his niche. A handful of others -- a managing
director, treasurer, wardrobe manager and parents committee -- assist
him in administration, but he does all the teaching. He also does a good
share of the arrangements, particularly of folk music, and composed numerous
songs for the children to sing. One of them is the group's signature closer,
"A Day in Spring."
The choir recorded with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
and Utah Symphony, performed on Public Radio International, produced two
recordings of its own (including the hot-off-the-presses "A Day in Spring")
and shared the stage with artists ranging from Frederica von Stade and
Grant Johannesen to Marvin Hamlisch and Pete Seeger. A highlight for Woodward
was taking second place at last summer's Western Division convention of
the American Choral Directors Association in Santa Clara, Calif.
"First place went to a choir from the Kodaly Institute
in Budapest," he said. "Of course [Zoltan] Kodaly was the guru of music
education. And the third-place choir was from Russia. The response from
the people in attendance, as well as the judges, was extremely gratifying.
. . . There are moments you can experience together with the audience
that you might say are worth a lifetime of toil."
The Salt Lake Children's Choir will give a 20th-anniversary concert Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $8 general, $6 for students.
Please visit the Salt Lake Tribune's web site to view the original article.
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