By TORY DENIS
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BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — The Yankee Male Chorus, founded in 1953 and entertaining the region each summer for 65 years, will return this summer for one final tour before disbanding.
“Sadly this is the last year for this well-known men’s chorus. Television, i-pads, the internet and the workplace have caught up with the chorus,” members said in an announcement about the final tour.
After 65 years, YMC will put away its music, close the piano, and fade into history.
Men from all over New England, New York, and surrounding states have gathered to rehearse and perform for four days every year since 1954. Each year, the group of about 90 rehearses just once, on a Wednesday afternoon, about 16 or 17 songs. And then, after one rehearsal, they go out and sing four concerts in four nights, usually at churches, schools, or service clubs.
Pete Harrison is one of the early members. He has been singing with the chorus since 1974, two years before they all went to Tanglewood in Massachusetts and gave a concert at the bicentennial Fourth of July celebration in 1976.
Harrison said he has been the site coordinator since 1998, having the opportunity to find locations for the group to perform four consecutive nights each year in August.
“We had several different venues over the years, and normally a sponsor would wait up to four years before we could return to their facility, assuming we were asked to return — which we usually were,” he said.
Harrison expressed some melancholy at the end of the longtime chorus group’s era.
“My wife Judy and I hosted an afterglow after each Friday night concert for 30 of those 45 years,” Harrison said on Sunday afternoon. “The saddest part for us is that, in all likelihood, we will never see these people again. And even sadder is the fact that we have formed some wonderful relationships over the years with so many wonderful people, many of them no longer with us.”
All chorus members over the past six decades have been volunteers, singing for fun, often taking vacations to be a part of the tour. The men generally come from other choirs, singing groups, and choruses.
The fellowship, love of music, and camaraderie are special for everyone, organizers said. Conversations which began last year, for instance, will pick up the following year right where they left off — despite the 360 or so days in between.
The venues for this year’s round of performances will be Aug. 8 at the First Congregational Church of West Brattleboro, Vermont; Aug. 9 at the First Baptist Church of South Londonderry, Vermont; Aug. 10 at the United Church of Bellows Falls, Vermont; and on Aug. 11 at the First Baptist Church of Chester, Vermont. All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m., and all venues are wheelchair accessible.
A free-will offering will take place at intermission. No tickets are needed.
Most of the music performed is standard “Male Glee Club fare,” they said. This year some of the more popular favorites of the club will be in the program, including “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Ol‘Man River,” “Steal Away,” “Bless This House,” and “Over The Rainbow.” Also included will be a piece that has in recent years almost become YMC’s theme song, they said: “River In Judea.”
This summer, Michael Wright will return as primary conductor, and Judith “Eric” Robinson will also be conducting as well and accompanying at the piano.
Over the years people have asked, “How do you make the glorious sound that you do with only one rehearsal?” It is because so many of the men are good music readers, have good voices, and are devoted to what they do, group members said in the email.
The singers are friends, “and the hundreds of miles between some of them does not matter. The only time it does matter is when you are talking baseball; Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.”
Music is one of the foremost things in just about everyone’s mind for four days in August, Harrison and a handful of chorus members who composed the email said.
“There is nothing in music that is quite like the sound of a men’s chorus. The range of sound, the drama, the deep base, and the utter thrill of a growing crescendo of male voices dashing through the air is unbeatable,” they wrote.
Some of the men will go to other choirs and choruses. A few will “really try to retire again, but YMC” will still be there in the back of their minds,” they said. They also added that people can never retire from music — the tradition, the friends, “the love that will not die.”
Harrison expressed that it will be hard for the men to sing the last few concerts this year without a tear or two.
The familiar songs will be different this time, for they will hold something special in their sound and feel, they said. The music will linger in their thoughts for a long time — “and will be a fitting tribute to a long list of places and towns, songs and friendships, friendships that have lasted a good part of a lifetime,” they said.
The group began in 1953, when founding conductor Rolland E. Heermance and a group of men thought that it would be interesting and fun to sing together at a town celebration in Massachusetts. They were asked to return the following year. Rolland had attended Ithaca College, studying voice, and later settled in Catskill, New York, where he founded the Catskill Glee Club. The group returned to Massachusetts the next year, and the Yankee Male Chorus was off and running, according to the chorus biography.
The group’s home base has always been the White Church in Grafton, Vermont, where they went 50 years, through 2003, without ever missed a concert. The acoustics there are hard to beat, they said.
The members of the first Yankee Male Chorus came mainly from the Catskill Glee Club, the Middletown Glee Club, and the Manufacturers Chorus.
The diverse group of men included those from the country and city, farmers, doctors, painters, businessmen, factory hands, truck drivers and and bus drivers. They all had one thing in common — they loved to make music.
In 1960, Heermance was killed instantly while driving people home from a church rehearsal Al Sparks stepped in to manage the tour and Clifford Ormsby, Ph.D., became the conductor. A native Vermonter with a home in Grafton, Ormsby, who had attended Ithaca College, Hofstra College, New York University, and Columbia University, had also sung with and been a guest conductor with the YMC and was already familiar with many of the men. He was a good fit. Over the years that followed, many men shared the conductor’s podium.
For YMC members it will be hard to say “Goodbye,” the current members said in the recent announcement. Rather they would say, “See you again someday and keep a good thought. Keep a song in your heart.”
For more information on the Yankee Male Chorus, visit yankeemalechorus.org.
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