Tony has decided to retire from Bowdoin

[Tony]

Dear Friends,

Earlier this week, President Clayton Rose wrote to the faculty with details of how spring semester will proceed at Bowdoin. It was no surprise that students will be studying most of their courses on line again and that in-person activities will be extremely limited. There will be no Bowdoin Chorus this spring.

As you know, I experimented with creating a virtual choir during the summer and concluded with considerable feedback from singers that it was not for us. There's no question that there are some fantastic virtual choir videos out there but it's not easy to make them and the students at Bowdoin have too many hours on the computer with their studies to make such a group feasible for Bowdoin Chorus.

Since I officially retired in January, 2015, I've been on short-term contracts. This fall I asked to be on unpaid leave so I could find new ways to produce choral music. I believe I have found one way that seems to work and I've named it the Lemonade Choir because we got lemons (COVID-19) and we had to make lemonade. Unfortunately for you, it exists at my farm in Cushing (about an hour's drive north of Brunswick) so it's not in your neighborhood. But it has been a success and some community members of Bowdoin Chorus have joined the group. No students are involved. If you are interested in what we're doing please read the attached statement entitled Lemonade Choir Phase II.

I had spring semester 2021 left in my current contract. I have decided that there is no way I can offer the Bowdoin students a meaningful choral experience under the current circumstances so I have told the dean to nullify my contract. I'm done! It's time for the Music Department to reinvent itself after COVID-19 is behind us. Robby Greenlee and I have had  fantastic runs and it's best that the program give younger people a chance to take it new places. Robby retired last May.

Although I'm saying adieu to Bowdoin I will continue to serve as Artistic Director of Down East Singers and Director of Music at the Episcopal Church of St. John Baptist in Thomaston. (The Lemonade Choir is an extension of these two organizations. It will cease to exist when COVID-19 restrictions are behind us.)

I am deeply grateful to all of you for your faithful participation in our group - some for the entire 28 years that I have led it. I'm also greatly blessed to have gotten to work with our brilliant and beloved accompanist, Sean Fleming all these years. It has been an honor and a joy  to work with all of you dedicated and enthusiastic people. 

Thank you and God grant you many years!

Tony

[Daniel Warren]

Dear Tony,

  Your news hits me in the gut, or more precisely the abdomen where soul and breath originate. You gave this old three sport jock a second life. Thank you for your welcome, tutelage,  and forbearance. I'll never forget the first Rachmaninoff trip to the west coast- coasting with help of your veteran singers; learning to listen, shut up (commended by Meg), and mouthe in silence when necessary; and standing next to the double bass, 2nd Ave Subway soloist in Grace Cathedral.

A breakthrough came when I couldn't put down my score for Black Nativity and you said, "the dog has to drop the bone."

Mary Sullivan then helped my new freedom. An athlete/singer friend said of choral music, Like sports there's tension in the parts but you try to get to the end at the same time.  Amen,  I hope for an afterlife in the Lemonade Choir. Dan

. 

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[A Downes]

Dear Tony,

I want to thank you for all your hard work, efforts and sincerity.  Although I was quite late to the party, I was truly impressed by the camaraderie that I experienced from the very first day.  You clearly have the uncommon ability to bring people together to create beautiful music and friendships.

I really loved the Russian and Ukrainian choral music. I am happy to know that I will still be able to find it on YouTube. The Requiem choral experience will hopefully become a reality someday for me as well.

My hope for all of us is that in the not too distant future choral music will thrive and flourish again.  

In the meantime, thank you and everyone in the chorus for making me feel so welcome and for bringing choral music back into my life after almost 40 years.

And thank you, Sean, for bringing such professionalism and gorgeous sound to our concerts.

God grant us all many years!

All the best - always,

Alane Downes

Harpswell 

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[Jeff Fischer]

Dear Tony,

I can’t tell you how much being in your chorus has meant to me. So much pleasure in the wide repertoire; in the discipline of learning it; in the intensity of performing it — where you always found something new to dig out of us; in the exalted Rachmaninoff tours. Each piece of music I’ve sung with the chorus has a place in me that no music I’ve merely listened to can hold. It’s in my body (even the unconsummated Brahms Requiem, which I sung along with feverishly during those first, most intense months of Covid).

I joined the Bowdoin Chorus in the fall of 1995, because my daughter Hannah, a senior at Mt. Ararat High School, was looking for more opportunities to sing. Though I’ve always been a shower singer, my formal music education stopped in the 8th grade with Miss Catherine Fear of West Pittston (Pa.) Junior High School in 1965. 

We dove into the Rachmaninoff Liturgy — with all those Slavonic pronunciations and the intensity and intricacy of 8-part a cappella  — and I was addicted. 

Hannah went off to college. I stayed for another 25 memorable years. 

Chorus was also one of the secrets of my equanimity as a high school teacher and I thank you for that, too: Sunday night is famously difficult for teachers, when the awful drum beat of “What am I going to do on Monday?” gets louder and louder. But I couldn’t stress or wear myself out with prep work before the teaching week even began — because I had a chorus rehearsal where I had to lose myself in a requiem or a spiritual rather than the teacher blues. 

Thank you Tony, and Sean, and all the many chorus members with whom I shared a community of music. So much fun!

Jeff Fischer