You know that you are truly loved and admired when more than a hundred people gather in a stuffy church sanctuary (without air conditioning)  on an oppressively hot and humid summer afternoon (with a temperature of 96 degrees and a heat index of 103 degrees) to listen to you sing a voice recital ….  and are absolutely thrilled to do so.

That was the happy scenario that played out yesterday afternoon at Holy Communion Lutheran Church when a veritable Love Fest swirled around Bill Dieckhoff,  who for many years was the highly regarded choral director at Park High School here in Racine.   Bill retired quite a few years ago and resettled in faraway South Carolina,  but he and his wife still have family and friends here-   and yesterday marked their most recent homecoming.

Five years ago,  just as Bill turned 75 years old,  he came back to Racine to sing a recital and asked me to accompany him on the piano.  It was a wide-ranging and challenging program,  and it would have been taxing for a singer half Bill’s age-  but he sang everything with startling freshness and skill, along with the consummate expressiveness that has always been a hallmark of his singing.   Yesterday marked his most recent such recital,  and his singing remains an absolutely miraculous marvel –  the best singing I have ever heard from an 80-year-old in my entire life.   He just doesn’t put a wrong foot forward,  and the entire time he’s singing it is as though time is standing still – and the world with all its crazy rancor is suddenly silent.  It was a marvelous pleasure for me to be at the piano on this occasion as well and accompany him through a lovely journey from “If with all your hearts” to “Where e’er you walk” to “Bring him Home” – and much much more.

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And what made the day even more special was that the concert ended with a performance by just over twenty singers who were Park High School alumni and proud past members of his concert choir there.  They had gathered Saturday morning for a rehearsal and time of sweet reminiscences – just over 40 singers who were anxious and excited to reconnect with their beloved choir director-  and fortunately,  a substantial number of them were available and excited to come back Sunday and sing on the concert.  They sang “The Road Less Traveled” from Randall Thompson’s Frostiana and it was a gorgeous performance indeed.  (How fortunate that the singers who were available for the concert were beautifully balanced amongst the four sections.)

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It only occurred to me as the final measures were dying away that there was a reason why this performance was so exceptionally moving for me.   Yesterday should have been the start of yet another Weston Noble Alumni Choir event in Decorah,  because most of the past ten events had begun on the third Sunday in July.   Sadly,  last year marked the final such gathering- and although it was almost certainly what had to happen (and it was entirely Mr. Noble’s own choice) there is no way around the emotional void that a lot of us are feeling right now.  Yesterday’s gathering of Park High School singers paying tribute to their former choir director was a sobering reminder for me of what was not going to be unfolding this week in the choir room of Luther College’s Jensen Hall of Music.  But it was also a joyous affirmation that the beautiful connection that so many of us felt with Mr. Noble at Luther is something that has played out again and again in all kinds of places ….  and that for as special and unique as our experience was and is to us,  neither Mr. Noble or Nordic Choir nor Luther College own exclusive rights to those kinds of joys.  The experience of singing great music in a fine choir is bigger than any one group or school or person – even a legend like Weston Noble  ….. and he would be the very first to say so!

The relationship between a great and loving choir director and his or her singers is potent and deeply personal- the kind of connection that, if anything,  grows stronger over time.  Maybe it’s because at the time you’re too caught up in it to fully grasp its meaning or ramifications-  and it might also be that in the moment,  we’re perhaps preoccupied with our own role in the equation ….. the beauty of our own voice or the depth of our own commitment to the cause ….. whereas only in retrospect do we more clearly understand and appreciate the work of that master musician on the podium.   And for those of us who have gone on to teach and/or conduct (as was the case with some of the singers performing yesterday with Bill) we are in a much better position to properly appreciate what it takes to do this well.   And when someone does it extremely well …. decade after decade  ….  that is something that probably cannot be celebrated too much.

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So bravo, Bill Dieckhoff, not only for being such a fine singer and gracious gentlemen ….. but also for being the kind of superb director who has revealed and nurtured and unleashed the talents of countless others over the years and brought a bit more beauty into this often-troubled world.    I can’t think of a better way to devote one’s life than that.   And those 100+ sweating people in Holy Communion’s sanctuary yesterday afternoon surely agree.