The Vancouver Master Chorale is in its 75th year of performing a range of choral music with a crew of volunteer singers. The choir has gone through several names and directors since 1949, and has toured across Canada, Europe and Hawaii. Today, the choir has grown to more than 100 members and performs everything from Beethoven to Billy Joel.
Jana Hart is the music director for the Vancouver Master Chorale. Brenda Hall has been a member since 1974, and Daniel Trushov joined just last year. We talk to them about the history of the choir and what it’s meant to community members over the last seven decades.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with the Vancouver Master Chorale, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary. It had about eight or 10 singers when it started in 1949. As reported recently in The Colombian, there are 110 now, but it’s remained true to its roots. It is a community choir of unpaid but highly accomplished singers. They’ve toured in Canada and Europe. They’ve played at Carnegie Hall three times. They’re headed to a festival in Costa Rica this summer. Three members join us now. Jana Hart is the Chorale’s music director. Daniel Trushov is a singer and a composer, he joined in August. And Brenda Hall joined in 1974, meaning she has been in the group for 50 of her 88 years. Welcome to all three of you.
Jana Hart: Thank you.
Brenda Hall: Thank you.
Daniel Trushov: Thanks for having us.
Miller: Let’s start right in with some music. We’re going to hear part of the performance from your 75th anniversary concert in which you got some added heft from members of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus and the Skyview High School Concert Choir. This is a part of “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
[Music playing]
Miller: Brenda Hall, what is it like to be in the middle of that sound, to be a part of music making on such a grand scale?
Hall: It’s almost overwhelming, but I love singing so much that, to me, it’s a huge privilege to be part of that, especially as I thought … I don’t know if I’m the oldest person in the choir, but I’m probably close to the oldest one. And to be still able to be part of that choir, to me, was such an honor.
Miller: I would have thought that at 88, you are the oldest member of the choir, but you’re not sure if that’s true.
Hall: I’m not sure because we’ve got a couple of other older ladies, but a lot of women don’t like to tell their age and that doesn’t bother me.
Miller: Thank you for sharing your age with us. Daniel Trushov, you’re on the younger end of this amazing stretch of ages. You’re 24, is that right?
Trushov: Well, I just recently turned 25.
Miller: Happy recent birthday. Why did you want to join this Chorale?
Trushov: Well, I took a look at some of the performances that they posted. I just recently moved to the area. I’m actually from Pennsylvania, but I moved to the Pacific Northwest in August. I was looking for different groups and what struck me was that this group is capable of doing these massive sorts of works with an orchestra and this big sound, so many accomplished voices in each section. I think that is quite unique.
Miller: How important was it when you were figuring out where you’re going to move to – and I understand you moved to Vancouver for a new job – but how important was it for you to find a place with a really fine singing group?
Trushov: I think that was a very important element of it. And I know Jana could speak to this, but I’d say this area is very much a chorale culture. You can even see this sort of in the high school music programs and just the amount of choirs in the area.
Miller: Jana, is there something special about the Vancouver area when it comes to singing groups?
Hart: Definitely. Oh, there are just certain places in the world where people sing like this and the Pacific Northwest just seems to, I don’t know if it’s the water or what,
but singing is just our thing here. It truly is. And again, as Daniel said, you’ve got these incredible high school chorale programs, college, the churches. Daniel I know is part of the Slavic Baptist church, which is huge in Vancouver, which has a music program on a scale of like a conservatory, a music conservatory, for their kids. But music just seems to thrive in Vancouver.
I wish we had a great performing arts center because for our last concert, for Beethoven, there were over 270 people on that stage, including the orchestra, of course. But it was just thrilling and people just love singing. There are so many really great singers that are here – again, just certain places in the world, I think.
Miller: How did what’s now called the Vancouver Master Chorale first get started, Jana?
Hart: Well, Bill and Irma Slocum, in 1949, they had been in World War II and with their GI Bill, when the war ended, Irma said she had heard Juilliard had good music classes. So they took their GI Bills and they graduated from Juilliard, he with a degree in conducting, she on piano – she was an excellent pianist. When they graduated, they moved west here to Vancouver. He had a church job. He conducted, I believe, at one of the local high schools. She taught piano and they started the very first community choir in Vancouver.
There had never been one before and it started with a few, called the Madrigals. In 1953 it grew, it became the Choraleers. In 1963 it became the Brahms Singers, still under Bill Slocum, and it was big. It was a big choir, they began to tour. In 1993, it became Vancouver USA Singers. And today, in 2018, we changed the name to Vancouver Master Chorale.
Miller: Brenda Hall, what was the choir like when you first got involved with it in the mid-1970′s?
Hall: It was definitely not as big as this. And Bill was a pretty hard taskmaster, but I just loved it. Every year, we did Gilbert and Sullivan and that was what got me started with the choir because I grew up in England and we listened to Gilbert and Sullivan. I was in three different Gilbert and Sullivan court things in England before I got married. And so it just was natural to me to join the choir. And then, I loved all the stuff, the different music we sang. I’ve learned to really appreciate the much, much harder music and I’ve learned a lot from the people I sing with. It’s just been a wonderful experience for me.
Miller: Let’s listen to another song right now. I should say that you don’t only play classical music. We’ll hear a little bit of Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time.” This is from your Valentine’s Cabaret show earlier this year.
[Music playing]
Miller: That is Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” played by the Vancouver Master Chorale at their Valentine’s Day concert from earlier this year. Jana Hart, what impact did COVID have on the choir?
Hart: Oh, it was huge as it was for every arts group. I mean, we’re still recovering. For us, we had to shut down. We had this Costa Rica tour planned for the summer COVID hit and of course, we didn’t go on that. But we took a year off. We tried to do the online kind of virtual choir stuff, which was so sad. It was just so depressing.
Miller: Was it worse than not singing at all?
Hart: Oh, it was because it’s not a choir. It’s everybody all alone in their little dark room singing by themselves. It just broke my heart, but we finally got back. We were able to get back after a year and we had to have strict vaccination rules at the church where we rehearsed. Everyone had to be masked with specific masks. We had to be socially distanced, which is hard when you have a great big choir. I mean, I remember one rehearsal, we spilled out to the parking lot, but we just showed up and we decided we were gonna do our concerts. I remember being completely hoarse at the end of those rehearsals, screaming like half a mile. But we did it and it was amazing. We did “Messiah” with our orchestra for Christmas and people just wept. They were so happy to be seeing the audience and so happy to be listening to live music again.
Then the second thing that happened with COVID is interesting, because we had a huge influx of people who were working remotely during COVID. All these people came, a lot from Northern California, Silicon Valley, but other states – New York, Florida, Minnesota, Arizona, New Mexico – [and] other countries [like] Portugal, Israel, Poland, Brazil. They were able to work remotely in Vancouver and get to an airport within 20 minutes, if they needed to. Of the west coast cities, it was more affordable than say, Seattle or L.A., San Francisco.
And so a lot of these brand new young people came in, many of them had music degrees because tech hires musicians, it’s kind of the same discipline, the same sort of a thing and degrees in singing, degrees in instruments. So all of a sudden, we had about 60 new singers with these incredible skills and these voices like Daniel. Daniel sang the solos in Beethoven, the tenor solos like I have never heard. It was amazing. So in a way, COVID was kind of, I won’t say it was a positive, but it wasn’t the tragedy that it could have been for us. We came out over the edge of it and came out better for it in some ways.
Miller: Is part of the reason that you were able to even survive is that this is an all volunteer group?
Hart: Yes, that’s the only reason because we have no salaries. I mean, when we have our orchestra, we pay them, but they’re contracted.
Miller: People get paid in joy.
Hart: Yeah, we were able to just contract down to, well, we have “Messiah” in the library, we don’t have to buy music. We were able to survive that way.
Miller: Daniel, what has it meant to you to sort of have this instant community as soon as you moved 3,000 miles from Pennsylvania to your new home?
Trushov: Well, it’s quite an exquisite experience and it’s not something I expected. I wrote an email to Jana to audition and the connection began from the audition. I think it’s a part of Jana’s personality, why this choir is what it is. She kind of attracts these people and opens the talents of those around her. She notices this young talent, allows them to bloom and gives the environment for them to bloom. And I think it’s wonderful to be a part of this.
Miller: You’re also a composer, as I noted at the beginning, and one of your recent pieces for string quartet was featured as part of the Chorale’s 75th anniversary program. We’re going to hear a little bit of “Ruins of Mariupol” in just a second. But first, hopefully you can just tell us a little about it. What inspired you to write this string quartet?
Trushov: Sure. In short, this music was inspired after seeing the images of the destroyed city of Mariupol in 2022, in the same way that Dmitri Shostakovich captured the tragedies of the 20th century in sound, as a musical chronicler of history. I tried to do the same, sort of to capture the magnitude of this historic event, this inescapable force of history and anxiety of the war, but also a prayer of hope for its resolution.
Miller: Let’s listen to part of the final movement of the string quartet.
[Music playing]
Miller: Daniel, what has it meant to you to have a local group that can premiere your works?
Trushov: Well, I think it is a wonderful opportunity that I don’t think very many amateur composers have. I think it’s a big challenge when you start out as a composer to have that first exposure, the first moment that people could hear your music. But having this opportunity is a huge gift, I’d say.
Miller: Brenda, as I noted, I can’t get past this amazing fact that you’ve been with this all volunteer chorus for 50 years now. Is it possible for you to even put into words what it’s meant for your life?
Hall: It fills my soul with joy. The music just fills me. I can be not feeling up to par or mentally up to par and go to choir. I come home, I feel like a different person.
Miller: What about socially? What have you gotten from other members of the Chorale over the years?
Hall: A family. Being here from overseas, leaving a family behind. They became a family that supported me when my son died in 1995, and when my husband died in 2006. And they were a huge support. They came to celebrate our 50th anniversary, the celebration with our renewal of vows. And then they came to support me after he died, two and a half weeks later. And I think it’s pretty hard to find big groups like that, that will do something that will be so supportive.
Miller: Jana Hart, what are your hopes for the Chorale’s next 75 years?
Hart: Oh, I hope they continue to just grow and be an outstanding performing group for Vancouver. Again, as we’re looking toward our season next year, it is just so exciting to go, “Why, we can do the Verdi Requiem” or “We can do this stuff.” You feel like they’re so talented. It’s just opened up all kinds of possibilities for us, but I hope they continue to be this sweet core of people. To me, that’s really almost more important than the excellent musicality. It’s important and you hear that in the sound of a choir.
Miller: Jana Hart, Brenda Hall and Daniel Trushov, thanks very much and congratulations.
Hart: Thank you.
Hall: Thank you.
Trushov: Thank you for having us.
Miller: Jana Hart is the music director of the Vancouver Master Chorale. Brenda Hall has been a member of the Chorale for 50 years. Daniel Trushov joined last year.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.