25th Anniversary Season

Our years in retrospect

by Audrey Wong

In August of 1979, about a dozen of us sat around the kitchen table of Betty Kaplan’s home—eating pizza, drinking beer, and unwinding in a relieved daze after having resigned en masse from the board of directors of the California Bach Society. “Now what?” we asked ourselves. “I want to make music!” Betty declared. So right then and there we founded the Baroque Choral Guild. In the ensuing weeks we drew up bylaws, filed for incorporation, hired a music director, rounded up a chorus, set up rehearsal sites, and planned our first concert. The following December we gave our debut performance, about which reviewer Paul Hertelendy said “BCG is alive, well and making music.”

As a group of music-biz cohorts, our desire was simply to produce good concerts and have the experience be enjoyable and gratifying for all. As a founding board we articulated our goals in organization-speak:

to present concerts of high artistic quality
to maintain financial soundness at all times
to be a mutually supportive community of performers and volunteers
to serve our geographical communities by presenting programs with high educational content
to provide for the future of music by offering training and performance experience to emerging artists and youth

We are about to start rehearsals for our 25th season, which I will enjoy as “just” a singer. Due to a long history and involvement with BCG, this singer possesses a deep sense of pride in our past and a profound appreciation for where we are now.

“Alive, well and making music” indeed. Last June Hertelendy, who wrote those words almost 24 years ago, reviewed our Musical Journey concert and described the chorus as sounding “more like a cathedral choir, and not like the community chorus of old.” He praised music director Sanford Dole for “how far he has brought the BCG toward vocal excellence.” Despite our love of the baroque, our “home” and namesake period, BCG is highly respected for its adventuresome and ambitious programming. We’ve presented music from the medieval/renaissance to the contemporary; sung a cappella, with chamber ensemble or full orchestra accompaniment; and performed as full chorus and various chamber-size subgroups. My personal favorites include the première of Julian White’s Montmorency Offertory (1984), Handel’s Messiah with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (1993), Rachmaninoff Vespers Service with chanting by Nikolai Massenkoff (1995), our a cappella Chansons program (1996), and our Saint Matthew Passion with four exciting young soloists and our own Cantabile Children’s Chorus (2001).

In June 1980, the fledgling Baroque Choral Guild found itself with a $750 deficit at the end of its first season. Our ten board members took out their checkbooks and wrote checks for $75 each. The following year we ended the fiscal year with a balance of $150. This was occasion for the memorable quote from board member Nancy Laleau: “That was a whole lot of work just to make a hundred and fifty dollars.” But we were delighted-and proud. Fiscal responsibility has been a high priority with the board. Careful and thoughtful planning has resulted in the Guild’s artistic growth with ongoing organizational stability. BCG has enjoyed a remarkable history of twenty-four years in the black, a situation which allows us to face the financially gloomy years ahead from a position of strength.

I’ve always described BCG as being a “secular church.” While preparing musical offerings for our communities, chorus members meet regularly to participate in a joint exercise that feeds the soul. In very short time, a band of singers becomes a confraternity of kindred spirits that provides support/resources for all manner of concerns including job-search, child-rearing, marriage counseling, car repair, pet/house sitting, travel information, cooking/food preparation, health issues, and of course computers and software! I think the most impressive and moving manifestation of Guild community occurred in fall of 1995, when long-time bass Jerry Farrell lost his battle with bone marrow cancer. He came home to spend the last weeks of his life, and required round-the-clock hospice care. Fellow choristers signed up to work three 4-hour shifts every day for four weeks. The outpouring was awesome.

One of the founding principles of the Guild has been to educate its singers and concert audiences by bringing to light rarely-performed choral gems: works by lesser-known composers or lesser-known works by well-known masters. Such programs are enhanced by informative notes and lectures which bring to life the musical works and shed enlightenment about the cultures which produced them. Audience members have expressed their enthusiastic appreciation of our preconcert lectures and other choruses, both local and from great distances away, have requested permission to reprint our notes in their concert programs. In addition to formal concerts, Guild singers have spread music awareness by participating in a variety of community events, often in collaboration with other performing groups. Highlights that come to mind include a two-week gig with Chuck Mangione at the Venetian Room in San Francisco (1986), a joint pocket-Shakespeare revue with Valley Institute of Theatre Arts (1987), a Harmonia Mundi Bach/Handel recording with Will Parker as an AIDS benefit for Shanti (1990), and the premiere of Angels Fallen and Otherwise with the Lawrence Pech Dance Company (2003).

Our founding music director Ken Hannaford was a grad student who used us as his master’s project in 1981. Over the years, the Guild has provided performance experience to numerous emerging artists; but BCG’s commitment to musical development goes even further. In the first year of our existence, we founded Peninsula Choral Workshop under the insistence and guidance of then-board president Fred Terman. This two-week summer program for high school students has been so successful that several local high schools have awarded PCW scholarships to their outstanding choral singers. Ten years ago Signe Boyer approached BCG’s board, seeking organizational backing for a new children’s choir—Cantabile was born and has been providing musical training and performance experience to Peninsula and South Bay children. Besides serving local youth, their families and schools, the Guild insures the future of music by nurturing the next generation of singers. It is such a thrill to see young people grow musically, and I’ve been moved to tears each time I’ve attended a Cantabile concert or Peninsula Choral Workshop recital. To me the gratification of, say, seeing a feature article on Nathan Gunn in Opera News and being able to claim “He sang with us when he was just a kid...” (1990 St. Matthew Passion) is matched by the delight of seeing a now-grown-up Cantabile or PCW student singing, teaching, or conducting.

We certainly have come a long way in 24 years. While we plan a big happy anniversary celebration, we know that we can—and must—look ahead to an even brighter future.

Audrey Wong is the Guild’s Founding Executive Director. She retired in 2002.

Volume 12, Issue 1

Baroque Choral Guild, 953 Industrial Ave. Ste 118, Palo Alto CA 94303, 650.424.1410