Years after falling in love with choral music, and each other, Mike and Susan Gammage have found a way to rekindle the days when their college romance began.
”My wife and I met in a college choir in north Texas, and we developed a love for choral music,” Baldwin City resident Mike Gammage said.
Both Mike and his wife joined the Baker University Community Choir last spring, when the group of area residents and students first combined vocal talent. The couple views the choir group as an opportunity to continue with one of their mutual loves.
Susan Gammage’s life has always revolved around the notes and sounds of music. From performing her first solo at the age of 8 to receiving a major in music education, she loves a musical challenge.
“I like the music we sing because it is challenging, but it’s fun, and we learn a lot,” Susan Gammage said. “It is challenging music that I have not sung since college, and it is fun to sing it again.”
No stranger to Baker’s music department, Baldwin City resident Walt Bailey shares with Susan Gammage the struggle to revisit music sung back in their college days.
<strong><a href="http://www.bakeru.edu/orangeline/specials/d2projects/choir/Potterton.mp3" target="_blank">Director Matthew Potterton Discusses Community Choir</a></strong> Director Matthew Potterton Discusses Community Choir
Opening up a choir aimed toward people who just want to attend because it is something they enjoy makes for a different conducting experience for Potterton.
“This has nothing to do with a degree,” Potterton said. “The (Baker) students are not necessarily here because of a degree, there are a couple majors in there, but most are a part of the group because they want to. The community, they are there because they sang in high school or college when they were younger, and they want to do it again.”
Not presented with many opportunities to sing with adults, Alexandra Rader, a freshman at Bishop Seabury High School in Lawrence, took a chance last year by joining the choir. Even as the youngest member of the group, she is not intimidated.
Instead, she looks at this as more of a learning opportunity.
”It is a different experience than a school choir, or younger kid’s choir, where the director has to treat you as children because some people may not know as much as you,” Rader said. “Here, I get to be more of an adult.”
Breaking the traditional mold of aspiring to either rock or pop star fame, Rader prefers the more natural feel of classical music. Still, making music into a future career remains a mystery.
“I still do not know what I want to do,” Rader said. “I might want to sing, or I might want to play the flute. I might want to grow up and be a businesswoman, but I do know music will always be my hobby.”
By having the weekly experience to work beside others like Rader, Mike Gammage’s drive for continuous learning and application has gone beyond musical notes and compositions.
“Multigenerational organizations are great,” Mike Gammage said. “We just need to get over ourselves and realize that these kids, and us, have more in common then we think.”
As Sunday’s 7:30 p.m. concert at the Baldwin First United Methodist Church continues to draw closer, Baldwin City resident Fred McCreary is ready for the choir to show off what a room full of people who share a common passion can produce.
“You feel the emotion, and in a performance you get to bring this emotion across to people,” McCreary said. “When these folks come to this concert, they are going to be in awe. There is a variety of music (Potterton) is doing and then you add Baker chorus, piano, orchestra. It is going to be great.”
