Choral Singers Note Neither Fame Nor Fortune : They Move to a Different Hummer

Once a week, the dinner dishes stay in the sink. The files from the office remain on the desk. One night a week is rehearsal. And everything else can wait.

The rest of the week, they’re teaching a class, pleading a case, chatting with a computer. But one night a week they sing. And singing, they say, is bliss.

They are choral singers. They gather in groups of 30 to 40 around the South Bay to train their voices in delicate 18th-Century melodies by Vivaldi or Bach, lilting Christmas carols in Latin or French, or Rodgers and Hammerstein’s greatest hits.

Only a few get paid for their trouble. Most of them pay for the chance to sing.

Fame Unlikely

They don’t get fame either. Vivaldi hasn’t seen the Top 10 for at least 200 years and a “Star Search” tryout isn’t likely for a group primly dressed in black and white, singing sweetly of angels on high.

But these singers are not concerned with the material world--at least, for one night a week.

On a wet Monday, they splash across the campus of El Camino College in Torrance to the music room, shed their coats and take their places on the risers. They greet each other gaily, but quickly--there’s work to be done. The busy holiday season is near. Rehearsal for the Christmas concert begins right on time.

They are the Jane Hardester Singers--a group of 33 devoted musicians, ranging in age from early 20s to 50s. Several of them have sung in the chorus since it was founded seven years ago by Hardester, a music instructor at the college. This season Hardester is on sabbatical and David Thorsen, chairman of the music department at California State University, Fullerton, leads them through their paces:

“OK. We start mezzo forte. Altos, I really want to hear that crescendo.”

Thorsen raises his hands for the downbeat and, in a glance, surveys his singers. They are sitting erect, music in hand, pencils wedged over their ears.

A nod to the accompanist at the grand piano, and Thorsen’s hands take flight. Sopranos, altos, tenors, basses--in turn, they start to sing.

Another Group Warms Up

Several miles to the south, in a Rancho Palos Verdes park, the South Coast Choral Society is warming up, but director Ted Gardner is getting the workout. In his bright blue sweat shirt decorated with the group’s logo, he waves his arms broadly like a swimmer stroking against the clock. Then he bends at the knees and pulls through the air like a vigorous cross-country skier.

Gardner’s singers--there are 32 of them, from teen-agers to senior citizens--are used to his dramatic style and enjoy it. Gardner clearly enjoys it, too. He founded the ensemble five years ago and now divides his time between his choral duties and his property management firm.

“OK. Stand up, please,” he directs the group. “We’ll run through the whole thing. And please listen to each other!”

Tuesday night rehearsals are a long-established tradition for the singers of Los Cancioneros Master Chorale, by far the oldest choral group in the South Bay. Founded in 1948, the choir has seen 10 different directors over the years, but many of the singers have remained staunchly loyal, with stints of 20 years and more.

Wide Repertoire

The 41 members, most from their late 30s to 60s, are currently led by Lisa Mellor, a 32-year-old Ph.D. candidate and softball fanatic. The weekly practice session in Torrance High’s music room moves through the musical ages like a fast pitch, from medieval carols to Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

“On that last ‘white,’ ” Mellor instructs them, “sing it white-colored. It’s a real spacey sound.”

To the MTV generation, choral singers may seem spacey, indeed. While most of the world is rocking to a very different drummer, why are these lawyers, teachers and engineers singing of pine cones and holly berries? And paying for the privilege, to boot?

Borrowing from Cole Porter, Norma Parker says simply: “It’s the top.” For Parker, who is president of the Hardester Singers, choral music is “a delicacy, like caviar.”

It’s a Challenge

“I could sing any kind of music,” she explains, “but when I want to get challenged--when I’m musically starved--I sing choral music. A ballad can get you in the gut, but choral music does that as well as touch you intellectually.”

John Felix, the newest tenor at Los Cancioneros, agrees. “It’s music that makes you think. It taxes you and forces you to develop your technique. You have to increase your range, learn breath control and really know your part. You can’t rely on somebody to do it for you.”

In the Hardester choir, they call their art form “the ultimate team sport.” Clearly, no egos need apply.

“You have to be aware which part is more important,” says Janet Hook, a soprano in the Hardester Singers. “And you need to know when to back off so another part can be heard. You have to submerge yourself into the group and into the interpretation of the conductor.”

That can be hard for some solo singers who thrive in the spotlight. But for those soloists who learn the give-and-take of the chorus, the rewards, they say, are tremendous.

‘Want to Cry’

A choir produces “an emotion and a sound that a soloist just can’t make,” says Becky Brand, a Hardester soprano and an operatic soloist. “There are places in the music where you just want to cry.”

Cedric Taporco, a Hardester bass, says the music sends chills up his spine. He calls it “a little bit of magic.” And that magic has kept him coming back for rehearsal every Monday night for the last seven seasons.

“We’re not there for fame and fortune,” Taporco says. We’re there because we have a nice place to sing with people who know how to sing.”

Choral members should know not only how to sing, of course, but how to sight-read music. And it helps, Taporco says, to know a few foreign languages--”or at least how to pronounce them.”

But the choral societies accept the casual singer as well as the trained musician. Chuck Blais of Los Cancioneros confesses to not reading music “that well.”

Good Ear Helps

“If it’s something other than four-four time, I have to sit and figure it out,” he says. “But I have a good ear, so I get by.”

For Blais, a gas and oil broker, the choral group is his safety valve, a way to release the pressures of a long day on the job. “I’m putting in heavy hours and this is my salvation. It cleanses my soul.”

But the hours required for rehearsals and performances can create another set of pressures for parents and working people.

“Sometimes rehearsals take time away from the family,” Blais says. “My wife gets a little upset.”

Gene Voorhees, a 23-year veteran of Los Cancioneros and a tax attorney, plans his work schedule around his singing. “Sometimes I come to rehearsals straight from the airport,” he says. “And I find the best place to look over my music is on planes.”

Little Financial Reward

But for all their dedication, choral singers receive little financial reward. About one-third of the South Coast Choral Society members earn a token salary, from $45 to $100 a month. The rest of the singers donate their time. At Los Cancioneros, the members pay $75 annual dues; the Jane Hardester singers pay $45.

Still, dues do not cover the costs of hall rentals, costumes, music and salaries for directors and accompanists. All the groups say they must resort to a variety of fund-raising methods: selling program ads, soliciting donations from individuals and businesses, and sponsoring events like garage sales, bowl-a-thons and home tours.

Ted Gardner of the South Coast group says his choir is “never set financially. But this is not a money game. I tell the singers that if they want to make money they should get a guitar.”

The lack of money is not offset by a shower of publicity. Local choral groups receive little attention in the music world. They perform, on the average, four times a year. A good audience will number 200--at Christmas, maybe 500. But they hold their heads high and keep singing.

“Choral music is the oldest music there is,” says Gardner. This period of neglect “may just be a phase. Choral music may come back and eclipse the orchestra.”

Sleepers at Symphony

But for now, Gardner acknowledges, “the orchestra is more socially acceptable. But I don’t think I’ve ever been to a symphony where one of the two people beside me wasn’t asleep.”

Competition, not only from orchestras, but from classical soloists, pop music performers and the theater is keeping choral groups out in the wings, says Jean Preston, a soprano in Gardner’s group. “But we can’t be what all people want us to be.”

And they have no intention of trying.

“Some people would think that this is kind of a peculiar thing to do,” says Virginia Felix of Los Cancioneros. “But I don’t worry about that. It’s probably not as exciting as race car driving. But it does give you a charge.”

HOLIDAY CONCERTS

Jane Hardester Singers, today at 7 p.m.; El Camino College, Marsee Auditorium, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance.

Tickets $8; call 329-5345 or 532-3670, extension 653.

Los Cancioneros Master Chorale, Dec. 8 at 3 p.m.; Norris Community Theatre, Crossfield Drive at Indian Peak Road, Rolling Hills Estates.

Tickets $7; children and senior citizens $5; available at door.

Los Cancioneros, Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m.; Marymount Palos Verdes College, 30800 Palos Verdes Dr. East, Rancho Palos Verdes.

Tickets are free.

Los Cancioneros, Dec. 15 at 7:30 p.m.; St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 31290 Palos Verdes Drive West., Rancho Palos Verdes.

Tickets are free, donations accepted.

South Coast Choral Society, Dec. 14 at 8 p.m., including “Messiah” sing-along; Pacific Unitarian Church, 5621 Monte Malaga Drive, Rancho Palos Verdes.

Tickets $5; call 377-7447.

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