Celebrity in my Ford

Christmas Echoes; The Dale Warland Singers

During my college years I drove a 1967 Ford Fairlane. And if I may say, ugly as sin. It needed a new muffler system. If I have endured any hearing loss in my life, it probably came from driving the Ford. But she had more personality than my friends’ Toyotas and Grand Ams. She gave out in March of my senior year. I remember the day that Dad and Uncle M. came down to tow her away. Sad, sad day.

The South Dakota Music Educators In-Service Conference always takes place on the campus of SDSU in the beginning of February. Choir and orchestra day usually lands on Thursday and band day typically happens on Friday. They try to bring in some big names in the music education industry for masterclasses and lectures. During my junior year at SDSU, they invited Dale Warland as a clinician for choir day.

I had heard of Dale Warland before. He had a famous choral group called the Dale Warland Singers who based themselves in Minneapolis, MN. I had frequently heard his ensemble on the Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor on public radio. Their visits happened most often at Christmas time.

Dr. C. had asked last minute if I could drive Dr. Warland downtown for a lunch appointment and then back to the conference site. I preferred to help Dr. C. with this small favor than to attend my macroeconomics class. So, my noisy Ford Fairlane had a celebrity as a passenger, much to the amusement of Dr. Warland.

Dr. Warland started his ensemble in 1972 at the behest of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The group’s personnel comprised of forty singers and together they specialized in the music of 20^th century composers, tackling difficult, complex yet beautiful polyphonic choral works for a capella choir. After winning numerous national and international awards over the course of two decades and a Grammy nomination for their 2003 CD called Walden Pond, the Dale Warland Singers under their auspicious conductor sang their farewell concert on May 30, 2004. The Dale Warland Singers Choral Score Library was purchased by the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music that year and they serve as custodian of those scores.

You may wait quite a while before you hear again this magnitude of precision, clarity and musicianship in another choir. Dr. Warland has clearly invested valuable time teaching the members of his ensemble how to listen. Not a single, solitary voice penetrates the musical contour’s well-honed sheen. True to their mission, the ensemble has solicited short settings of carols and commissioned brief original works that celebrate the birth of Christ. The works of Stephen Paulus stand prominently from the others.

I miss the Dale Warland Singers. I miss my Ford Fairlane. Neither of these two entities outlived their usefulness. Through circumstances beyond my control, their time came. Lamentably, I don’t have any pictures of the Fairlane. But thank God I have recordings of the Dale Warland Singers.

Credits: To the Walker Art Center and organizations like them, that can visualize an artistic need and seek to have it fulfilled, not for themselves, but for a public who needs it, yet doesn’t know it. Thank you.