July 29, 2020

AGMC want to feature bios of its members. Here’s mine:

1. Where were born?
2. How long have you lived in Asheville and why did you move to Asheville?
3. Choral/choir experiences.
4. Career/work.
5..Family.
6. What ever you would like to say about your partner, husband, lover or most unusual "friend''.
6. One thing--unusual, funny, meaningful--that most people don't know about you.

I was born in Akron, Ohio, and have lived in Asheville since July, 1983. I moved here to take a position as Assistant Professor of English (then Literature and Language) at UNCA.

I started singing in the 7th grade when I somehow screwed up the courage to audition for the Hyre Junior High choir. I was a soprano. Somehow during that time I divined (without actually being taught) how to read music. Sang all through high school, branching out into Boys’ Glee Club and the Madrigals. By then I was a bass. The Madrigals were great because we got out of class and sang for local businesses and professional meetings. Sang through college, where I began to appreciate the concept of repertoire, and to understand what I liked and why. In graduate school in Baltimore, I sang with the Goucher-Hopkins Chorus, the Goucher-Hopkins Madrigal Singers, and got my first paid gig at the Second English Lutheran Church, about a block from Johns Hopkins. I sang for the Baltimore Opera, at which time I performed for Aaron Copeland, met Rosa Ponsell and Bidu Sayao. Long story. . . . In Syracuse I auditioned for a group called Pro Musica, which specialized in ancient & Renaissance music, and which performed old form full sung masses at the Church of the Saviour. It was then I began my love affair with ancient and Renaissance music, which has not abated. Sang also for a group called Schola Cantorum, which concentrated on the more secular side of things, Monteverdi and old opera, etc. Coming to Asheville I began singing at All Souls in 1988– following in Jack Parsons’ footsteps– and joined in the creation of Cantaria, as it was then. Did stints with Asheville Choral and Symphony Chorus.

I just ended 40 years of teaching (37 of them at UNCA), while before and after that time I am a writer. 

I have a sister who lives in Atlanta with her second husband, three nephews and a niece. My niece is expecting her second daughter in Colorado. I’ve been doing genealogy and, believe me, there is more to it than that, but we’ll save it for another time. 

OK, what leapt into mind when I read the question was. . . let’s call him T. We were both heavily into theater, and I’d come to watch his plays, and he mine. Though this says nothing good about our concentration, we’d manage to blow a kiss into the audience, hoping we hit the general direction where he sat in the dark. That’s hard to do in something like Macbeth.

I am an open book. Everyone knows everything about me. But let me admit to a couple of guilty pleasures: Jackie Chan movies, YouTube videos of hunting feral hogs, vanilla anything.  

Standing in my garden at twilight. A turkey cock struts along the fence. A rabbit nibbles over by the sunflowers. Since I’ve never seen him do anything but graze the grass, I’ll suspend my war with the ground hog for now. Thrushes and catbirds flit from one branch to another. It is a kind of Eden. I’ll try not to do anything to break that trust.