‘Choir nerds’: Singing with friends, family is ‘Best of All Possible Worlds’

Shayna Theismeyer set her sights on Dakota Luu, sort of, a few years ago when both of them were singing in April Duvic’s vocal music class at Clark College.

Sort of, she said, because she wasn’t quite sure how she felt or how to read him. Good thing Duvic intervened, nurturing some beautiful new harmony like the natural-born choirmaster she is. One day she pulled Theismeyer aside and pointed out: “He’s really cute and he likes you. Can’t you see it?”

She saw it. Duvic became a “mail-order minister” in order to officiate at Theismeyer and Luu’s wedding last December in Esther Short Park. “It felt really important that she be the one to marry us,” Theismeyer said last week while preparing to sing again with her husband, under the direction of the teacher who helped make the match.

“I’m from a family of choir nerds, three generations deep,” Theismeyer added. “Choral music is such a great escape. It’s so great to be able to geek out with like minds.”

Elsewhere in the St. Paul Lutheran Church sanctuary, six members of the extended Warner family were also ready for rehearsal. “We’re a singing family,” said Rosemary Warner, who met her husband Rick when they were in the choir at Fort Vancouver High School. Now, all three of the Warners’ sons are “amazing tenors,” she said, two of whom, Jon and Dan, married equally talented singers, Brooke and Emma; another son, David, would have been at this rehearsal, too, except he’s now busy performing in the chorus of Portland Opera.

“Music is built right into this family,” Rick Warner said. “But if you come around on a birthday, you’ll hear the most dissonant rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’ Dogs bark, babies cry.”

He’s surely being modest. The Warners and the Luus are all members of the Reprise Choir, a truly top-flight vocal ensemble that was brainstormed and pieced together — by invitation only — by Duvic and her former Clark College faculty collaborator, Janet Reiter.

When Duvic followed Reiter into retirement a couple years ago, she said, there were howls of protest from students and singers who didn’t want to stop working with her. Duvic was ready for retirement from college teaching but didn’t want to stop working with them either, and she was eager to renew her partnership with Reiter, too.

“Why do you have to stop singing when you graduate?” she wondered. “Why isn’t there something as intense and focused after that?”

That’s what gave rise to Reprise, a 33-voice group that includes more than its fair share of local music educators and other serious choir nerds. The Reprise Choir aims to tame some pretty ambitious music; you can hear the results during this weekend’s mini-tour of three local churches: Faith Baptist in Hazel Dell tonight, St. Paul Lutheran in downtown Vancouver on Saturday night and St. John’s Presbyterian in Camas on Sunday afternoon.

“I did some research,” Duvic said, “and found there really wasn’t a choir anywhere that was operating on the model we were considering.” That is, a professional-level yet all-volunteer group, led by a pair of women who share the conducting and accompanist duties, and focused on one superb springtime concert presentation annually. Several of Reprise’s singers are music teachers who are busy preparing their own groups for their own concerts through much of the rest of the year, Duvic said.

After the Christmas concert season is over, Reprise starts “hitting it hard at a very high level, January to May,” Duvic said. Last year’s inaugural pair of concerts were standing room only, Reiter said — a delightful surprise and a good reason to schedule three this time.

Real things

“It’s just all about the way things are in the world today,” Reiter said about the concert, which is named for the irresistibly catchy, bouncy “Best of All Possible Worlds” opening from Leonard Bernstein’s operetta, “Candide.”

Is this really the best of all possible worlds? Reiter and Duvic see a ton of trouble, and believe choral music can make it better. That’s why they chose concert material that grapples with the real world — like John Lennon’s mournful-yet-utopian “Imagine” and Pablo Casals’ deeply dark “O vos omnes (O You People).”

“Rather than talk around things, it’s good to recognize them,” Reiter said. “You’re not just making sound. You’ve got a text that’s talking about real things.”

Those real things include hope and joy, too, like “Workin’ for the Dawn of Peace” by Ron Jeffers, “A Jubilant Song” by Dello Joio and Walt Whitman, and “Bright Morning Stars Are Rising” from Aaron Copland’s masterpiece “Appalachian Spring.” Many of the singers will step forward for solos during the concert, Reiter noted — that’s how good this group is. It’s an unusual balance of male and female voices, she added.

“We want music that builds people up, that makes people think,” Duvic said. “We want to sing about something that’s meaningful, thoughtful, powerful. We all like to think that music can make the world a better place.”