By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When the 142 singers gathered in the BG Performing Arts Center Sunday afternoon Richard Schnipke gave the downbeat.
Unseen to them, across town, watching the live stream of the BGSU Summer Tour Choir Reunion performance, RD Mathey was conducting.
Mathey started the choir back in 1973, enlisting 45 singers, mostly members of the A Capella choir he conducted at BGSU, to join him on a six-week cross country jaunt. The adventure was repeated every four years until 1997, a few years before he retired.
Though he’d been instrumental in organizing the reunion, health issues kept him from attending. The choir members who have been rehearsing in Bowling Green since Friday night, paid him a visit at Brookdale where he is staying. They sang, and he conducted a number, with energy and musical acuity, his son Shawn Mathey said.
Eric Kauffman, who was a member of the 1993 choir, served as master of ceremonies. He made sure that Mathey’s voice was heard by reading remembrances of the tours the conductor penned for a 2012 reunion.
The narration caught the spirit of the tour including the hijinks. Once, in Iowa, the choir arrived to find the 1200 seat auditorium had only 20 listeners. When Mathey came on stage he saw “a beautiful woman” sitting alone in the center of the nearly empty hall, staring intently at him. When he signaled the choir to begin the National Anthem, some members had smirks on their faces, some was giggling, some laughing.
The “woman” was a mannequin that choir members had found backstage and had placed strategically in the center of the hall.
The heart of the event was the singing.
The vocalists gave full voice to the music from their youth, giving the songs a depth and resonance that comes with age. The joy and emotional investment in the music was evident on each face.
The repertoire, beginning with “Come To The Water,” sung as the members processed down the aisles of the Performing Arts Center to the closing Benediction, was heavy on religious anthems, including gospel songs.
Callie Day, a professional singer from Atlanta who toured with Mathey in 1993, performed the penultimate “He Never Failed Me Yet” turning the hall into a revival meeting with the audience clapping on 2 and 4 to her exhortations.
The repertoire was fitting, given the summer tours played many churches, including services. Mathey wrote that he would have had an easier time booking engagements if the choir was from a church affiliated school instead of a state university.
Other pieces were arrangements of American folk songs. The choir with Juliane Gorretta-Sharp (1997) and Schnipke (1989 and 1991), who now holds the same BGSU faculty position as Mathey did, as soloists performed “This Land Is My Land.” Kauffman prefaced the Woody Guthrie song by talking about Mathey’s insistence that the choirs see the landmarks the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Disneyland, New Orleans as well as odd ball museums and a ghost town.
Kauffman, who now runs Beyond the Classroom Tours and Travel, a company that organizes trips for school groups, asked some “get to know the choir” questions.
So, the audience learned that Jennifer(Kent) Eachus (1993) was the only one who was a Division 1 athlete. She was a varsity diver while at BGSU. A dozen or more hands went up when he asked who met their spouses on a summer tour. He ruefully said he wouldn’t ask how many were still married. When he asked how many became choral directors, it seemed like half the hands went up and even more hands went up when he asked how many became teachers.
Dean William Mathis of the College of Musical Arts spoke to the impact Mathey, and his work had through this legion of educators who passed through ranks of his choirs. This choir, he said, testified to “the transformative power of the arts and music.”
“Everything I learned about being a choral director, I learned from RD Mathey,” Kauffman said as the concert neared its end.
The repertoire was drawn entirely from pieces the summer tour choirs had sung, many sung by every choir. That included “Amen,” the piece that served as a solo for the director.
As it started a recording of Mathey’s voice rang through the hall. When the choir entered, the solos were shared by a trio of Scott Ailing, Dan Doty, and Jon Diehl with Ben Ayling(1977), retired director of Choral Activities at Ohio Northern University, conducting.
“Fifty years is a long time,” Kauffman said in conclusion, “but still not enough time for us to tell RD Mathey how much he has meant to our collective lives. From your mentorship to your friendship, we owe you the greatest debt of gratitude and we only hope to Pay It Forward by continuing to be that beacon of positive energy you bring to the world every day in everything you do.”
The performance ended with the members of the choir lining the house. Others who’d sung with Mathey were invited to join them. With Janine Baughman (1977), the reunion committee chair, conducting, they performed “Benediction.” They sang: “God be with you till we meet again.”
As the final chord faded, the audience rose to their feet to applaud. As they cheered, singers hugged, and some shed tears.
