It is a Thursday night in February, but it is still light as people converge on First Presbyterian Church for the fourth rehearsal of the Clinton Community Choir.
Mark and Gay Smith, music directors at First Presbyterian, joined with Diane Hannah to recruit members for the choir last year before Christmas. Mark said he had hoped for at least four to six people in each of the four sections, and the response was more than twice the higher number.
“If everybody’s here, there are 50 people,” said Diane, “but we’ve had half a dozen calls from people who have flu or colds that couldn’t be here tonight.”
The choir members are all ages. One young woman brings her small child.
“There is a pretty even representation of voices —sopranos, altos, tenors and basses,” Diane said.
The choir first got together on Feb. 1. To start last Thursday’s rehearsal, Mark led the singers in vocal warmups, singing one-syllable words in intervals, ascending and descending octaves. Vocal warmups stretch the vocal muscles and open up the voice, improving pitch and tone. Mark reminded the singers to keep their mouths open, drop their jaws and hold their music in front of them, not on their laps, so they keep their heads up and their eyes on him.
“That lets the sound go up, instead of down to the floor,” Mark said.
Then he launched the singers into a run-through of the first piece they are preparing, with Gay providing accompaniment on the piano. Mark always compliments the singers before asking them to repeat a section of the music, and had them laughing at his comments.
“Everybody’s been having a good time,” Diane said. “We have a lot of people saying they haven’t sung since high school. They enjoy singing.”
Nancy Gilmore, who lives in Montrose, said there wasn’t a choir when she was in school there. She and her husband, Kent, are two of six family members in the choir, and one of the two couples in it.
The other couple is her brother-in-law, Len Gilmore and his spouse, Tammy, who live in Osceola. Nancy’s cousin, Lela Highley, comes from Harrisonville to be in the Clinton choir.
“All of us used to sing in the Garden City Choir and enjoyed that,” Nancy said.
It’s been a few years since the choir disbanded, Nancy said, which was after the director, Calvin Yoder, died in 2020. But the Garden City Choir membes still get together occasionally for a reunion, Nancy said. She and her husband don’t know most of the people in the Clinton Community Choir, she said, but are gradually learning faces.
The Gilmores’ daughter, Erin Cordrey, who lives in Deepwater, also joins her family for the Thursday night rehearsals.
“We’re enjoying it,” she said. “Mark’s style of directing is different from Calvin’s, but he knows what he’s doing.”
Calvin was the founding member and lead singer in The Rural Route 4, a barbershop quartet, and director of the gospel quartet, Jubilee Transfer. Mark probably sang with him somewhere along the line, Nancy said.
Nancy is an alto and Kent sings tenor, but he can also handle the bass parts, she said. Nancy’s favorite piece the choir is rehearsing is the patriotic one, she said, referring to “A Tribute to the Armed Services.” A stirring medley of Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force anthems, it concludes with “America the Beautiful.”
The Garden City Community Choir performed an Easter cantata every spring, Nancy said, but Mark and Gay wanted to include secular as well as sacred music in the Clinton choir’s repertoire, which it will present to the public on April 18. It includes two show tunes, “My Funny Valentine,” by Rogers and Hart, and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with “Climb Every Mountain,” by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
“All the music has been from donations from the community,” Diane said. “The community has really supported us, really come through for us.”
Clinton Community Choir is presenting the program on April 18 at the Performing Arts Auditorium at Clinton High School. Other pieces they are performing: “What a Wonderful World,” first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967 and named to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
“Old West Medley” is a blend of favorites every school-child used to know: “The Red River Valley,” “Home on the Range,” and “Yellow Rose of Texas.” The medley starts with “The Old Chisholm Trail,” and ends with a sprightly reprise of the chorus.
The deep men’s voices singing “From this valley they say you are going,” the first lines of “Red River Valley,” reflects the poignancy of separations that occurred as people moved west.The other voices come in, adding layers of harmony.
“It’s not often you hear this many voices singing together,” Diane commented.
The harmony is moving in the ethereal spiritual, “Hush! Somebody’s Calling My Name.” The choir is also singing a praise hymn, “As Long As I Have Breath,” by Sue Farrar.
“We want to include her because she’s from Clinton,” Diane said. “She wrote a lot of music.”
Farrar was born and raised in Clinton, then went to Southern Methodist University to complete a bachelor’s degree in music education. She worked in church music ministry in Texas, forming several women’s choirs. She wrote the words and the music to the hymn, dedicating it to her friend John Ness Beck, who was her inspiration in times of pain and joy. Farrar died at age 70 in 2004 of cancer.
The choir is also singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the words from a poem by Julia Ward Howe.
Clinton Community Choir is not meeting this Thursday, Feb. 29, due to a family conflict for the Smiths, but will be rehearsing on subsequent Thursday nights into mid-April. First Presbyterian Church is located at 220 E. Franklin, on the corner of Franklin and Third.
For more information, contact Diane Hannah at clintoncommunitychoir@gmail.com.
