Richard Kennedy inspiring the community into song

Rehearsals have started for the Community Chorus’ annual Christmas Concert to be held at Polk County High School Auditorium Friday, December 12 and Sunday December 14. The concert is a benefit fundraiser for the Rotary Scholarship Fund. This season the choir will be led by Richard Kennedy who recently retired to the area along with his wife Dot. I stopped to visit with them on my way home from work one evening to learn more about his musical background and what led them to Tryon.

How did you end up moving to this area?

I taught in two schools. I finished graduate school in 1972 and my first job was at North Greenville Junior College. I taught there seven years. I conducted the concert choir there and we toured. When I look back, it was an incredible stint to do the quality of music we did with junior college students. But they were good music majors. I did seven years there in Tigerville.

In 1979 we moved to a small private school in Pippa Passes, Kentucky. It’s named for Browning’s poem, Pippa’s Song with the famous line “God’s in his Heaven, All’s right with the world.” Alice Lloyd and her cofounder June Buchanan loved poetry. They started that little college in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and I conducted the choir called the Voices of Appalachia for 28 years. We travelled all over the country. In fact my last duty before retirement in May of 2007 I took the choir to California for two weeks and then when we got back that was it.

It must have been hard to say goodbye.

In a way it was kind of nice to go out on that note. That last group was a great group of kids. I had no problems travelling with them. I had a lot of juniors and seniors in that group, so I had a lot of experience. They knew to be on time and where and when they were supposed to be. We had a real good time.

When you were out there where did you perform?

Our concerts were mostly in churches and retirement centers. Alice Lloyd is a private non-sectarian college. They depended a lot on the philanthropic generosity of people from all over the country. They had donors in every state including California. They had established a donor base out there years ago, so every seven or eight years the choir cycled in a trip out there. It’s always a great experience for the students and it reaped benefits for the school. It was so worthwhile for the students. They stayed in people’s homes most of the time when we were travelling. They would get to know these people and when we’d meet back at the bus the people wouldn’t want to give them up. They’re really wonderfully pure students, just great kids.

After retiring you decided to return to this area?

When we left we said, maybe we’ll come back some day. We have some real close friends over in Tigerville who are like family. We’d come down every few weeks from Kentucky and spend the weekend with them. We sort of gravitated here. I’ve always loved this area.

Before moving here, where had you come from originally?

My undergraduate degree is from William Carey College it Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Mississippi is where my wife and I met. Then I went to Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas for a master’s in vocal performance. I knew I wanted to teach and so I sent out 50 some resumes at the end of the graduate program. I had a couple interviews out of that and it was getting toward the end of summer and we had moved back to my home town of Atlanta and were living with my mother temporarily. On a Friday the president of North Greenville called because their choral director had some health problems. They’d been in school a month and he was going to have to take medical retirement. They wanted to fill the position as soon as possible. That was Friday and they wanted me to come in Monday morning for an interview. I said “Yeah, I’ll be there.” Monday we drove up here to Tigerville for the first time and spent the day interviewing. At the end of the day the president called us into the office and said, “It’s your job. Why don’t you and your wife go down to the end of the hall and there’s a vacant office where you can talk about it as long as you need to, and then let us know your answer.” We talked about it and by the next Monday I met my first voice student. In the meantime we’d flown back to Texas to get our furniture out of storage.

It’s amazing how you waited all that time and you were ready to go and then suddenly it happened at the last minute.

I’ve had a great career of 35 years and it was really what I was meant to do. It hasn’t been lucrative, but we’re not homeless. We’ve been fortunate because Dot’s been teaching too. We don’t have any children of our own, but 36 years as an elementary teacher and 35 years as a small college teacher we have plenty of “adopted” children and some of them locally here. We were able to devote our time and energy to our students. She had children in elementary school who are still in contact with us and are grown now with children of their own. That’s when I decided I needed to retire. About three years ago I looked up at the choir one day and I had three, what I call choir grandchildren, children of students of that choir I’d had in Kentucky. My last few years there I always had one or two that were children of students I’d had when I first went there.

So you relocated back here because you knew you wanted to be here and then ended up directing again at Tryon Presbyterian.

We were looking for a church and I was looking for a bit of retirement income. In the meantime we were visiting different churches. When we went to Tryon Presbyterian, one thing that drew us there was Leslie Bush’s organ playing. He’s a wonderful musician and fine organist. We decided to join the church back in the fall and of course we were singing in the choir. In the middle of December someone came to me and asked if I would take over directing the adult choir while Leslie would stay on as organist and music director. I started in January of this year. We were actually members of the church first and then things worked out. Leslie and I work extremely well together. It’s wonderful to have an accompanist like Pam McNeil is for the Community Chorus, who you just don’t worry about. I’m directing two choirs now and both of them have accompanists who can play anything, follow well, take direction well, and are a pleasure to work with because of their great personalities. Tryon Presbyterian has a really good choir, not because of me, there are some really good singers gravitating to that church, many who have directed choirs before.

What drew you into directing community chorus?

Jan Impey had mentioned that she was going to be retiring, but I was involved with the Greenville Chorale at that time and they were able to get Crys Armbrust to direct the spring concert. The board asked me to direct this winter, and seem to be taking it one concert at a time.

How is directing a community chorus different from directing college students?

Well not a lot. I don’t approach it much different. I have a certain choral sound that I want to hear from whatever group I’m working with. I do whatever I have to do to try to achieve that. I think that a community choir is the purest form of making music chorally. Professional choirs give you the musical perfection, but with a community choir there’s something unique about the gathering of so many different people from different backgrounds. It’s just a pure form of what we do as a choral art. I’m there to have fun. If it’s not fun, we might as well go out and dig ditches or something. It needs to be productive, but I’ll take a few wrong notes if people are singing with enthusiasm and understanding of the text. When you take the music and add meaningful text to it there’s nothing to beat that combination.

Speaking of which, you selected the Robert Shaw suite for this concert. What drew you to this collection?

I think it’s brilliant. Robert Russell Bennett’s Broadway touch to these standard carols is blended with Robert Shaw’s perfectionist input. I was in a few sessions with Shaw over the years and he’s a stickler, but in the end he wants to make music. Most of all he wants the choir members to do it for their own satisfaction and well being. If you do, that’s when then the audience gets it. That magic moment. I used to tell my students, even though my back is to the audience, I can tell whether they’re getting it or not. There’s a sense in the room that takes place between choral groups and audiences. You don’t have to face the audience to get it. Shaw was a master of that. I think they’re great pieces and there’s enough variety throughout the four suites. The ending is a bit wild.

The winter is such a dark time of year.

It’s good in the winter time to have an uplifting kind of thing. I wish we could have a full orchestra because it has a wonderful score. If I can get the parts, I believe I can get a brass group in from Rutherfordton and I have been given the name of a harpist. It has some great harp parts in it. So with a few instruments I think we can do a lot. With the full orchestra it’s just stunning.

Do you have a favorite section?

I love the O Sanctissima that starts with men’s four parts really soft. Then also the transitions from one song to another I think Shaw and Bennett just did a great job of putting that together.

I enjoy the part where Fum Fum Fum is mixed with March of the Kings.

I think it’s an ingenious work. I’ve done all four parts in concert about three times over the years and the singers and audiences always enjoyed it. I think it’s a perfect vehicle for a community choir.

It’s not like your listening to the same thing all the way through.

They vary the keys. One of the tricks I learned in church music years ago when your choosing the hymns vary the key center. At the end of community or church choir I want people to be glad that they came. If they were tired from a long day of work or whatever when they arrive, they leave more refreshed. I think making music can do that. It’s one of the great things about the human spirit and its connection to the arts, we can lighten the load and it’s just fun. Even when I retired I knew I wasn’t going to retire from making music.

The community chorus rehearses Monday evenings from 7-9 p.m. at Tryon Presbyterian Church on Harmon Field Road across from Tryon Arts & Crafts. New voices are still welcome as the chorus prepares for two concerts December 12 and 14. The show will also include a short talent showcase and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. Tickets for the concert will be available from Rotary Club members and at the door.