The Chapel Choir fills up the Sunday service with song | Mark Manring
Show Up, Robe Up, Sing Out
Duke's Summer Choir Less Stringent, Open to Community
Friday, May 30, 2008
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Durham, NC -- By the time summer rolls around, most of the 120 members of Duke Chapel’s highly drilled and dedicated volunteer choir are ready for a vacation. But not tenor Russell Owen.
“Participating in great music in the great space that Duke Chapel is, is really like an addiction,” Owen says.
From June to August, while the regular Chapel Choir is on hiatus, Owen gets a little help with his addiction by singing in the Chapel’s summer choir. This choir is open to anyone and relies on potluck for its cast of singers that changes from week to week. Unlike the regular choir, summer choir has no auditions and requires no long-term commitments. Every Sunday, anyone who shows can robe up -- as long as the singer arrives by 9:15 a.m. for a rehearsal before the 11 a.m. service. Blue and white choir robes and sheet music -- ranging this summer from Renaissance to contemporary composers -- are provided.
“We never turn anyone away. We even have one singer, Steve Cassell, who happens to be blind, and he gets his music transliterated into Braille,” says director Allan Friedman.
“The summer choir is a really nice outlet for me,” says Cassell, who is also a member of the Duke Chapel congregation and the Chorale Society of Durham. “Sunday morning I can get up early, and instead of being just a spectator, I can go and participate with the rest of the choir.”
Summer volunteers range from kids to adults in their 90s. Some are regulars who return every year; others just drop in once or twice a summer. It’s a much looser structure than for the regular Chapel Choir, which holds auditions, rehearses twice a week and requires members to miss no more than three services or rehearsals during a semester.
“We found that in the summer it’s very difficult to have a standing choir, just because people’s vacations are so diverse, and at the university, summertime is break time for most people,” Friedman says.
Sometimes singing in the summer choir just for one Sunday can provide solace for people visiting a loved one at the hospital. Friedman recalls a man who experienced this last summer.
“He came up to me after and said his wife had a brain tumor, and it was such a ‘blessing,’ I think is the word he used, to be able to come here and worship and think about his wife and hope for healing, and also to interact in such a lovely and holy space,” Friedman says.
Not knowing who is going to show up each Sunday is Friedman’s “biggest worry,” but he has made the weekly balancing act his specialty. He credits Chapel organist David Arcus, who accompanies the choir, with bringing out the group’s confidence. “It can be a little intimidating to sing in Duke Chapel,” Friedman says.
Russell Owen and his 16-year-old daughter Lucy, a low alto who sometimes joins him in the tenor section, say Friedman’s enthusiastic direction is a big draw. “He makes it a great deal of fun,” Russell Owen says. “He’s a master of similes to help us better understand the style or emotion that we’re trying to convey in the music.”
“I love Allan, he’s so enthusiastic,” agrees Lucy, who is a student at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham. “He’s OK with mistakes, he wants you to fix them, but the emphasis is less on precision, more on just having fun.”
Although the summer choir may not equal the yearround choir for grandeur, Owen says its spontaneous esprit de corps provides him with a different sort of high.
“I’m frequently surprised myself in the course of the service when the music does come together, when I was concerned that maybe it wouldn’t,” he says. “You get a little more of an adrenaline rush out of that.”
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Interested singers should arrive at Duke Chapel at 9:15 a.m. to rehearse for the 11 a.m. service any Sunday from June 1-Aug. 10, except July 6. Information: chapel.duke.edu/home; 684-3898.
