And music in the list’ning place: Southern Oregon Repertory Singers turns 40
By Daryl Browne, Oregon ArtsWatch
A brief history of the Ashland choir, from its inception at a pizza parlor through its upcoming season featuring music by Peter Relph, Eric Whitacre, and Rep Singers composer-in-residence Jodi French.
ASHLAND – Southern Oregon Repertory Singers came to life at Angelo’s Pizza Parlor in Ashland, Oregon in December, 1985.
“It was the closing-night afterparty of Amahl [and the Night Visitors],” said Brian Tingle, bass singer and co-founder of Southern Oregon Repertory Singers in a recent phone conversation with OAW. “Over a couple pitchers of beer Ellison, a couple of other folks and I decided we could start a choral organization.”
It was an idea based on a shared love of the choral arts and a keen sense of how to serve the needs of the community. Turns out it was a terrific idea. On October 25 and 26 Southern Oregon Repertory Singers invites the community to join them for the opening concert of their 40th season of singing, “The Skies Sing.”
Keeping it close
In 1985, Ashland was already a city with a reputation for fine performing arts. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1935 by educator Agnus Bowmer – happy 90th OSF! – was filling theater seats; Britt Music Festival, founded by John Trudeau in 1963, was just a half hour away in Jacksonville; and the performing arts were quite active at Southern Oregon State College (now University).
Many Ashland choral musicians already sang in one – or both – of two existing Rogue Valley choral groups. Siskiyou Singers had been entertaining Ashland audiences for three years. And some folks were making the 20-mile trip to Medford to sing in Rogue Valley Chorale under the capable baton of Lynn Sjolund, who founded that group in 1973. But a core of Ashland singers wanted a select auditioned choir close to home, with performances in their city. And they envisioned a choral organization that would offer more singing opportunities to young musicians at Southern Oregon State College’s choir program under the direction of Ellison Glattly.
Ah! Ellison Glattly. Brian Tingle’s partner in the pizza-fueled choral conversation. Glattly eagerly agreed to lead the soon-to-be-formed choir. There was now a mission and the talent.
In capable hands
Ellison Glattly joined the music faculty at SOSC in the early ‘80s, continued to build the choral/vocal department and became an artistic presence in the Ashland community. He could be seen at the college choral concerts, as music director in small musical theater productions and as soloist with Rogue Valley Chorale. He knew choral repertoire and had the vocal ability, skills acquired from his California college degrees and from singing and touring with the famed Roger Wagner Chorale.
Tingle, in phone conversation with OAW, shared the joys of his early life in Modesto, California in a home filled with music. His father gigged on occasion with jazz musician/big band leader Les Brown and made sure that his four children would all experience band, choir, theater and sports. Tingle played baritone horn but it was his bass voice that would take him around the world, with SOC his starting point and finishing point.
After graduating from Southern Oregon College (no “State” designation yet) in 1973, Tingle enrolled in the University of Oregon overseas master’s program and studied at the U of O German Music Center where he sang for Helmut Rilling in the Figuralchor der Gedächtniskirche, Stuttgart. Tingle would sing for Rilling again in the Oregon Bach Festival Choir and would tour again to Europe, performing, among other concerts, a Verdi Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic in West Germany.
What choral memories he has! One remarkable concert experience with Helmut Rilling remains quite dear to him. In 1974, the choir performed Darius Milhaud’s 1972 work Ani Ma’amin a dramatic cantata based on text by Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel. At the concert conclusion, the audience of 2100 in the Liederhalle, Stuttgart, rose silently from their seats and left the hall.
So many choral musicians – perhaps some of you reading this – recall similar moments where words and music, composed to commemorate or illuminate significant life stories, reach into the soul. “These are the kinds of experiences that I have had that led me to co-found Rep Singers,” said Tingle. Experiences which have kept Tingle – have kept the whole choir – singing for 40 years.
Between college and touring Tingle was substitute teaching in choir classrooms in Salem and joined the newly formed Oregon Repertory Singers in Portland. Ironically, it was Tingle’s brief time with ORS that would, years later, lay an important cornerstone in the history of the new choir. With their goal of excellent choral “repertory” the Ashland musicians proudly substituted their home region and gave the choir a name.
“Our first concert was in April of 1986 with a core of 24 singers.” Here is Rep Singers’ first program; take a close look at the first half repertoire.
By golly, this is ambitious first-concert-with-24-singers programming! Renaissance to 20th century; Poulenc, Brahms, Britten and more. “I conducted the Pablo Casals O Vos Omnes,” recalled Tingle. But rounding out the concert was the lilting Polly-Wolly-Doodle and Aaron Copland’s rousing Stomp Your Foot. Rep Singers’ inaugural program shows an awareness that beautiful choral music can appeal to a wide range of musical tastes. This awareness would continue when Paul French became the Music Director for Rep Singers in 1990.
Glattly left his college position in 1989 and decided to pursue another passion; he become a professional golf pro in Sacramento. The choir sang for a short time with College of the Siskiyou instructor and already well-known composer and pop/jazz icon, Kirby Shaw.
The ensemble turned to SOSC’s new Director of Choral Studies, Paul French. It was another terrific idea. French, who received his D.M.A. with Rodney Eichenberger at University of Southern California, took the podium as MD for the first time in 1990 and will now, thirty-five years later, open Rep Singers’ 40th Anniversary season.
Steady on
A very special Rep Singers’ concert prompted soprano Clancy Rone to join the choir. It was Christmas of 1987 and Ellison Glattly was conducting Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols at the SOSC recital hall where the choir still offers their Ashland performances. “I sat and cried, it was so beautiful. I’ll never be over it,” she said in recent conversation with OAW. Over thirty-some years Rone has enjoyed singing with folks in their 80s and, has watched young SOU singers, like Portland baritone Dan Gibbs, go on to successful careers in music.
A few years ago Rone decided that the role of “Emeritus Singer” was more suited to her voice but she continues as Rep Singers’ longstanding choral librarian — brava — and today creates the concert supertitles on the big screen. She has a shared history with Rep Singers. It’s her community.
Paul French’s vast knowledge of choral repertoire nurtured the choir’s mission to “perform timeless and contemporary works, ignites passion for choral music, and enriches diverse communities through transformative power of voice” (Rep Singers’ website).
French programs music that appeals to choral lovers of all ages. “We are so lucky right now,” said the conductor. “It is easy to find quality new choral music that attracts a wider audience, giving us a gateway into the whole singing community. And folks know that the music we perform, even the contemporary works, will be music that goes right to the heart.”
In 2018 Rep Singers’ groundbreaking performance initiative, the James M. Collier Festival of New Choral Music, was introduced and has since brought to Ashland the music of Will Todd, Craig Kingsbury, Gabriel Jackson, Alvin Trotman, Ēriks Ešenvalds, and Rep Singers’ Composer-in-Residence Jodi French. Paul French introduced the new Festival in this 2018 clip:
Now, here’s some strictly insider info on Rep Singers’ history of commissioning new works, shared on the QT by Tingle. The first Rep Singers’ commission was for a work by Craig Kingsbury. His remuneration from his friend Paul French was a bottle of fine whiskey.
Kingsbury was subsequently named Rep Singers’ first composer-in-residence and Ashland audiences have enjoyed hearing his choral works over the decades. The composer’s “It was a Lover and His Lass” and “A Song for Midsummer’s Eve” from his multiple choral settings of Shakespeare songs will be performed on the October 25 and 26 concerts with veteran OSF Shakespearean actors Jim Finnegan and Christine Williams setting the stage with select scenes.
In residence
The choral works of Ashland-based composer Jodi French have also been attracting audiences to concerts since she was appointed composer-in-residence in 2011. She is also a highly sought after accompanist – you might have seen her speeding from room to room at state Solo/Ensemble contests – and has served at the keyboard with Rep Singers and at the University for decades. “She follows everything,” said conductor French in a recent zoom interview with OAW. “She knows what I am going to do before I do it, and knows when to play choir parts.” No, the common surnames are not a coincidence; she and Paul celebrated 27 years of marriage this year. And “professionally, we get along,” said the conductor with a wry smile and glance at his life partner who sat next to him in the interview from their home in Ashland.
In that same zoom interview Jodi French spoke of her creative process. “I pay very close attention to current events, domestic, abroad and local. I think sometimes there is a path to speak to not only the details of certain events or what is underlying but to what you believe is possible. A lot of times something that was written long ago is still true hundreds of years later; the human thought is the same.”
In several of Jodi French’s works you will enjoy Celtic influences. It is a sound with which she became acquainted while observing classically-trained string players “crossing over” to Scottish and Irish Celtic fiddling.
One such piece is “The Cloths of Heaven” from Unquenchable Light performed at the inaugural James M. Collier Festival of New Choral Music in 2018. It is set to the rhythmic and lyrical text of Irish Revivalist W. B. Yeats.
Rep Singers, like so many choirs, vowed to keep bringing music to their community during the pandemic shutdown. Paul French interviewed Rep Singers musicians and several composers whose music Rep Singers has performed through the years. Listen here to the interviews with Jodi French, Ēriks Ešenvalds and Eric Whitacre.
Whitacre’s beautiful Saint Chapelle will be performed on the upcoming concert as will the music of Marques L. A. Garrett, Josef Rheinberger and Morten Lauridsen. Jodi French’s setting of a Celtic blessing, “Sleep of the Seven Lights” will complement a 2025 work, Give Me Your Stars, by Lucy Walker, written to commemorate VOCES8’s 20th season. Listen to that work, sung by VOCES8, here.
Three and a half decades
Paul French’s musicianship and vocal teaching skills are highly regarded. Brian Tingle credits his own vocal longevity to French’s skills in vocal pedagogy. In recent email to OAW Sam Barbara, Artistic Director of Northwest Vocal Arts, praised French’s keen choral ear and his understanding of vertical score awareness. It was Barbara who suggested that Portland baritone Dan Gibbs could tell folks about Paul French as a teacher – and about Paul French’s heart.
Life beyond
When Dan Gibbs returned to Ashland in 2024 to solo in Rep Singers’ Faure Requiem Brian Tingle and Clancy Rone were just two of the Rep Singers veterans who joyfully welcomed him back. Gibbs was overwhelmed. “There were so many familiar faces; I felt like I was coming home to family.”
“I first met Paul in 2003,” said Coos Bay native Gibbs in phone conversation with OAW. “I was 15, a student of David Aker at Marshfield, and he adjudicated my performance at the district solo contest. We continued to cross paths in this way throughout my high school years, and he not so subtly recruited me to attend SOU to study music.”
From those first meetings “I could tell he was not only a fantastic teacher but a really good person,” recalled Gibbs. “I appreciated that he was interested in me as a person, not only my vocal talent. When I started singing at SOU he made it a point to offer opportunities for me to sing and perform.” Gibbs sang with Rep Singers from 2007 until his move to Portland in 2015.
“Paul’s influence reveals itself more and more as I age and continue to teach and perform, said Gibbs. “My drive to keep learning and improving, sharing my heart and time with my students, and never shying away from finding beauty in every piece of music I come across is in large part owed to my time with him.”
Gibbs teaches voice from his Vancouver, WA studio. He has appeared on stage with Portland Opera Chorus, New Wave Opera, Vashon Opera, Rogue Valley Chorale, Modesto Opera and more local and national companies. Learn more about Gibbs here.
A large part of the support he received was from Jodi French as well. “They are a married couple and a team; it is pretty hard to speak of Paul and his success and warmth without mentioning Jodi.”
Never strangers
“Paul and Jodi have done so much for the community over the years. You must ask Kim about the campus food pantry,” said Clancy Rone.
“Ah, yes. The pantry started with the small refrigerator in the music department,” said Southern Oregon Repertory Singers’ new Executive Director Kim Andresen in recent conversation with OAW. Before she accepted the ED job at Rep Singers she spent four years in the music department and four years in marketing for the Oregon Center for the Arts at SOU.
Paul and Jodi French noticed that the music students were not eating regularly or well, often subsisting only on chips or snacks. “We started bringing real groceries to fill the little refrigerator,” said Paul French. “And Jodi would bring in fruit, meat, cheese, and proteins that were easy to grab and go.” That led, said Andresen, to more conversations with students and an awareness of their financial strains – “some students were wearing threadbare shoes; some even sleeping in their cars.” Andresen, Paul, Jodi and Rep Singers student members helped organize an SOU Music Department Community Food Benefit Concert to support music students and the campus community student food bank. “Paul and Jodi were always there for the students, ready to help,” said Andresen. “Their hearts are so big – they make a difference every day, and have always been so generous with their time, talents, and resources.”
A Scottish blessing Jodi French set to music seems appropriate at this moment:
I saw a stranger yestreen,
I put food in the eating place,
I put drink in the drinking place
and music in the list’ning place
Listen here to Jodi French’s The Stranger Among You accompanied by cello, piano and nyckelharpe.
The extended choral community matters to Paul French. When Rep Singers performed at The Rogue Valley Manor, a Medford retirement community, former director and founder of the Rogue Valley Chorale Lynn Sjolund and his wife Doris were in the audience. “Lynn organized a choir there,” said Paul French. (If you knew Lynn, you are nodding and saying “of course he did.”) Lynn Sjolund died at age 95 in 2024.
“We’ll be returning to the Rogue Valley Manor community again this year and also to Mountain Meadows here in Ashland,” said Andresen. Educational and community outreach and increasing the connection with our community, are a priority for Rep Singers. “Seven of our singers are currently offering vocal support to Ashland High School, assisting with individual vocal lessons, coaching, and supporting the AHS Choir and principal actors in the school’s production of The Wizard of Oz.” And Rep Singers often shares their concert space with area choirs. This year Grants Pass High School choir will join Rep Singers for their Christmas performances. Student tickets for Rep Singers’ concerts are only $5.
They found a home
Co-founder Ellison Glattly returned to Ashland in the late ‘90s, opened a frame shop and sang in Rep Singers under Paul French for twelve years before retiring to the Oregon coast. Glattly died in 2023 at age 79.
Brian Tingle? He’ll be up there on the stage performing in what he jokes must be his 1000th performance with the choir. “Oh, I think I’ve missed maybe four concerts,” admitted the co-founder with his engaging chuckle.
What’s next
What’s ahead for Southern Oregon Repertory Singers in this 40th season?
This Christmas Clancy Rone might have to wipe away the tears once again when Rep Singers offers three performances of Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Forgive the early nod to Christmas, but the site of the December 19th concert is the newly renovated, historic Holly Theatre in Medford. Cool. Grab those seats soon. More information here.
Much has changed in the past forty years. Rep Singers now brings 70-ish voices to the stage, often accompanied by community instrumentalists, sometimes in collaboration with full orchestra. The budget supports a team that includes marketing and media specialists, box office staff, and the choir offers their core 24 professional singers a fair wage for their services.
Executive Director Andresen is committed to documenting Rep Singers’ history. The marketing team is busy collecting pictures, programs and stories from those involved early on and has even pitched a documentary idea to Southern Oregon PBS. Sadly, Brian Tingle’s vast collection of personal and Rep Singers memorabilia was lost when his home was destroyed in the 2020 Almeda fire. Thank you for sharing your memories, Brian.
After the turn of the year there are two more concerts on Rep Singers calendar. In March “the transformational power of love and music [will] poetically lead the listener on a journey which ends in gratitude and joy” (website). In May the James M. Collier Festival of New Choral Music continues with works by composer-in-residence French and the choral/orchestral premiere of To The End in Songs specifically written for Rep Singers by Peter Relph, with a guest artist not to be missed, baritone Christopheren Nomura. Read more about these upcoming concerts here and in further OAW choral previews throughout the season.
And in special recognition of this season Rep Singers will release a 40th Anniversary CD commemorating old favorites and new works including the abovementioned work by Relph. That Anniversary CD will be available in person at the Anniversary Celebration in June 2026 and as a digital download through the Rep Singers’ website.
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Paul French retired from the University in 2022 and Jodi followed shortly after. They continue to serve as Music Director/teacher and Organist/composer at Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church. And they will continue into Rep Singers’ fifth decade to further nurture the Ashland choral community.
“I suggested to Paul recently,” said Brian Tingle, “that he should always be “Dr.” Paul French in programs.” The conductor said he is fine just being Paul French.
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“The Skies Sing” on Saturday, October 25, 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 26, 2:00 pm; both concerts will take place at the SOU Music Recital Hall in Ashland. For concert descriptions in detail, information, and online tickets, visit repsingers.org or email: tickets@repsingers.org or call 541-552-0900.
Original article: https://www.orartswatch.org/and-music-in-the-listning-place-southern-oregon-repertory-singers-turns-40/