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Touch of Class choir touches hearts with song

Four concerts feature works that focus on world peace and will raise funds for local charitable causes

By Scott Hewitt, Columbian staff writer
Published: April 28, 2017, 6:05am
8 Photos
Jane Hansen, center, has been singing on pitch all her life despite being born hard of hearing. Touch of Class is a friendly, low-pressure singing situation that helps her musical skills and her brain stay sharp, she said.
Jane Hansen, center, has been singing on pitch all her life despite being born hard of hearing. Touch of Class is a friendly, low-pressure singing situation that helps her musical skills and her brain stay sharp, she said. (Photos by Natalie Behring for The Columbian) Photo Gallery

You can’t argue when you’re singing. But you can get plenty excited, especially while belting out a rousing anthem such as “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.”

“What we want to do at the end is get everybody riled up,” director Allison King encouraged the Touch of Class Chorale during a recent rehearsal.

Touch of Class, a 40-member community choir, was getting ready for a series of four charitable Clark County concerts boldly entitled “There Will be Peace in the World.” Choosing that theme “was a no-brainer,” said choir director King during a rehearsal break.

“There is so much acrimony around the election. I needed to do this for myself as much as for anyone else. Fortunately, there is a plethora of material on this theme,” King said, and it spans everything from Mozart and Leonard Bernstein to that grand singalong from the hippie musical “Hair.”

If you go

“There Will be Peace in the World,” a concert tour by Touch of Class Chorale

When, where, beneficiary:

• 2 p.m. April 29, Elim Lutheran Church, 15815 N.E. 182nd Ave., Brush Prairie. Benefitting North County Community Food Bank.

• 2 p.m. April 30, Mill Plain United Methodist Church, 15804 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd. Vancouver. Benefitting Council for the Homeless.

• 2 p.m. May 6, Vancouver Church of Christ, 9019 N.E. 86th St. Vancouver. Benefitting Club Quest Mexico Mission.

• 2 p.m. May 7, East Woods Presbyterian Church, 16210 N.E. 20th St. Vancouver. Benefitting YWCA Clark County.

• Tickets: $12; $10 for ages 6-16; free for under 6.

• Contact: touchofclasschorale.com

The concert series will do more than just wax musically eloquent about peace and community; it’ll also raise funds for that future. Touch of Class is a nonprofit organization that always shares half of its revenues with local charities, and this time around, each church it’s visiting has also designated a charitable beneficiary. The North County Food Bank, the Council for the Homeless, a Mexico mission and the YWCA Clark County will all receive funds from the ticket sales for these shows.

That’s a key motivation for many of these singers, according to singer Jane Hansen: spreading some good around this needy world. The singers all pay group dues, as well, she said, which bolster the charitable gifts as well as defray expenses such as King’s pay and renting rehearsal space.

Natural musicians

But the real motivations for many singers is even more basic: joy and community.

“There is such cool science about singing,” said Laura Ross. Singing releases endorphins and oxytocin, hormones that promote feelings of pleasure and belonging and relieve stress and anxiety, according to a recent report in Time magazine; it’s also been demonstrated that singers’ hearts really do tend to “synch up” while they’re doing it in groups.

“Our bodies connect and our minds connect. It’s like group meditation,” said Ross.

Jane Hansen said she was drawn to Touch of Class, a non-audition choir, for a special reason: she was born hard of hearing — missing high-pitched sounds — due to an infection in utero. Touch of Class is a friendly, low-pressure singing situation, she said — and yet, Hansen added, she’s always been able to sing on pitch.

“I grew up singing. I’ve always had music in my life,” said Hansen. Her twin sister has even more severe hearing loss, she said, and yet grew up to be a “natural musician” who sings soprano solos and plays the piano.

“It just shows that music is such a natural thing,” she said.

‘Peruvian Singers’

So natural that during the early 1970s, alumni singers from Battle Ground school choirs started clamoring to continue singing with their beloved choir director, the awesomely named Orell Peru. They launched a new group and gleefully called it “The Peruvian Singers” before changing it, in 1978, to Touch of Class.

Ross said that her own grandfather was the Battle Ground superintendent who first hired Peru. Her mother was a Peru student and founding member of the group, she said; now her daughter is too, she said. “My whole family has been involved and that’s not unusual,” she said. “It’s become a family-oriented, multigenerational thing.”

Singing in a choir is “probably the ultimate cooperative activity,” said King — a solo singer who earned a degree in vocal performance at Portland State University, but who also fell in love with choir direction along the way.

Joy and community are at the core for her, too, she said.

“The beauty of being the one who ties it all together is pretty great,” she said. “When I’m standing in the center and getting bombarded by all that marvellous sound — I feel privileged to able to do it.”

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