BRATTLEBORO — As part of the ongoing celebration of their 20th anniversary year, the Brattleboro Women's Chorus will present a concert of compositions entirely by its founder and conductor, Becky Graber.
On May 7, at 7:30 p.m., at Next Stage in Putney, and May 8, at 4 p.m., at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, the chorus will be accompanied by Bill Ballard on alto sax and Connie Green on flute.
Green played with Graber many years ago in the Brattleboro Brass Band. Also joining in are Maggie Smith (bells) and Jen Rice (marimba), who taught with Graber at the Brattleboro Music Center-sponsored Camp Allegro. Newer friends to Graber are Lisa McCormick (guitar and ukelele) and Cathy Martin (piano and keyboard).
Graber formed the Brattleboro Women's Chorus two decades ago, shortly after she moved back to Brattleboro after living in Portsmouth, N.H., for 10 years. Although she had had a flourishing career in music in Brattleboro, Graber made her living as a storyteller in Portsmouth, traveling around New Hampshire to libraries and other venues to present her shows.
But with two young children, Graber found that she no longer could travel.
And she missed Brattleboro.
“I grew up in Minnesota, but moved to Greenwich, Conn., which if not polar opposites of Brattleboro, were very different,” she says.
Graber initially moved to Brattleboro after college.
“Once I saw Brattleboro, I knew that this was the place for me,” she explains. “Here was, and still is, a lovely small town with a great arts community.”
She quickly became friends with Tony Barrand, Karla Baldwin, Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, and others in the Brattleboro music scene.
“Soon I was working at the Chelsea House, a rather legendary place for folk music that was located in the barn next to [what is now] the Chelsea Royal Diner in West Brattleboro,” Graber says. “In those days, I taught music throughout the West River Valley and piano at the Brattleboro Music Center. I reluctantly left Brattleboro when I decided to go to graduate school at Lesley College (now Lesley University) in Cambridge, Mass.”
Graber saw coming back to Brattleboro as the moment to return to music.
“I looked around to see where I could fit into the cultural scene of Brattleboro, and a woman's chorus seemed a good fit,” Graber says. “I have always enjoyed leading people in singing. I wanted to find a way to build and have relationships over time. My idea was to do what I loved and what I was good at, leading people in song and finding and arranging good songs to live with. In this way I could best give to people in the community an acceptance of themselves as I supported them as musicians and people and at the same time support myself and my family.”
Just at the time Graber was considering this, Mary Alice Amidon was thinking of letting go of a singing class she was teaching and wondered if Graber could pick it up.
“This seemed a great opportunity for me,” Graber says.
Graber established a specifically women's chorus for a rather practical reason.
“It was all about market and identity,” Graber says. “There already was the Susan Dedell Brattleboro Concert Choir. My idea had no specifically feminist angle. I just thought only women would come out to join my chorus.”
People did come out and join. This year, more than 100 members of the Brattleboro Women's Chorus will help Graber celebrate the group's 20th anniversary at the concert of Graber's own compositions.
“Someone suggested that for this anniversary a good idea for the Women's Chorus would be a full evening of my songs,” Graber explains. “Of course, I was flattered and honestly thought it might make a good program for a concert. I originally intended also to include my arrangements of other music as part of the evening, but it turned out that I had enough original works to fill an entire concert.”
The Brattleboro Women's Chorus will perform 11 of Graber's songs, only two of which they have already performed. While a few of the compositions are from past years, most are new, composed especially for this concert.
“A deadline is great to make me organize and finish my song compositions,” Graber says. “A lot are new. Most of the songs were composed within the last five years. Almost all were written specifically for the Brattleboro Women's Chorus, although a handful were composed, not for our sound, but for any all-women's chorus. Actually, performing those songs has turned out to be more challenging because inherently they require a broader range.”
Graber herself wrote the lyrics to some of the songs, but in about half of them she used words from other people, including poetry such as “Sit By an Apple Tree” by Louise Erdrich, “Trust” by Pierre Teilhard du Chardin, “Light Beams” by Antonio Machado, “Clearing” by Martha Postlethwaite, and “Winter's Harvest” by Jane Elsdon.
“I discovered 'Winter's Harvest' through a Tai Chi class,” Graber says. “Our teacher would often bring in a poem to start the sessions. Some of these would sing to me. One was 'Winter's Harvest.' I wrote to Jane Elsdon and asked if she would let me set it to music for our chorus. She not only was pleased with the idea, but was happy to let me make a few small changes in the text to fit the music.”
According to Graber, she and Elsdon had a “lovely” correspondence.
“[She] was under Hospice care, and I really hoped she would make it to hear this concert,” Graber says. “Unfortunately Jane died two weeks ago. Nonetheless, her friends told me how meaningful it was to her that her poem traveled from the West Coast to Brattleboro to be part of this concert. Jane had earlier told me of her joy of having her poem set: 'Becky, this is what poets live for,' she said.”
Two songs have words by chorus members, “Our Whole Lives Long” by Lynette Sievert and Graber, and “When I Saw the Hawk” by Sue Owings.
“A chorus member asked me to set a piece she wrote for her mom who has dementia,” Graber says. “Lynette captured in her words for 'Our Whole Lives Long' that experience. Its refrain goes, 'We sing sweet songs together, our harmonies are strong, Yes we sing our songs together as if we've sung our whole lives long.' The whole Women's Chorus really loves that song, which brings with it lots of tears for everyone.”