Why We Have Funded Two Endowments for Future Outstanding Bach Festival Soloists

Thirty-four years ago in 1990, we sang Brahms’ German Requiem for the very first time under the baton of Maestro Joseph Flummerfelt with more than 225 other choristers, four wonderful professional soloists, and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra during one of the five weeks that summer of major choral works sponsored by the Berkshire Choral Festival (now Berkshire Choral International-BCI) in Sheffield, Massachusetts. That week of morning and evening rehearsals and the culminating performance Saturday evening for an enthusiastic audience of several hundred persons were absolutely transformative for both of us, and, while then in our early 50’s, we made a personal commitment on the way home the next day to continue to sing the world’s finest choral music for as long as we could. To keep that promise, we sang with BCI for 37 summer weeks between 1990 and 2023 either at their home base in the Berkshires or in venues in Sante Fe, Vancouver, Winter Park, Montreal, Canterbury, Salzburg, Budapest, Prague, and, most recently, Florence’s historic Verdi Theatre, where we sang his Requiem last summer. During those BCI weeks, we sang most of the major choral works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Rossini, Faure, Verdi, Lauridsen, and others. Each week we learned from and watched as wonderful national and international choral conductors brought a work to fruition in the course of five or six days, including Robert Page, John Rutter, David Hill, Jane Glover, Grant Gershon, Amy Kaiser, and our own Maestro John Sinclair twice, once in Sheffield and once here in Winter Park. And especially relevant to the two endowments we are now funding, we sang each performance with outstanding soloists.

While BCI gave us our summer “classical choral fixes” over the years, we continued to seek out and sing with local choral groups wherever we were then living, including the Community Choral Guild in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Charlotte Symphony Oratorio Singers when we moved to North Carolina, and the Stockton Chorale when our final career move took us to the Central Valley of California. While enjoyable and satisfying, these local opportunities to sing the kind and quality of choral music we had come to savor were no match for the challenges, joys, personal satisfaction, and gratitude we have experienced during the past 16 years as members of the Bach Festival Society Choir of Winter Park. Membership in the Choir has been a central part of our lives since moving to Florida in 2008. That July, over lunch during a BCI week focused on Handel’s Soloman, fellow tenor Tom Cook, who is now a retired faculty member at Rollins and has been a member of the Bach Choir for more than 30 years, suggested that, since we were now living in central Florida, we might want to see if we could join his Bach Society Choir based at Rollins College. Shortly after returning home, we contacted Conductor John Sinclair, who graciously auditioned us that week and then spent a memorable hour with us in Knowles Memorial Chapel recounting the history of the Choir, his years of experience with it, and his aspirations for it. Within a month, we were singing with the Choir during its first rehearsal of the 2008-2009 season, which included the music of Haydn, Saint-Saens, Rossini, Bach, Brahms, Nielsen, and a special performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana with the London Symphony. What a way to initiate an incredibly satisfying new singing opportunity! And one that’s just gotten better and better every year. Probably the best measure of our 16-year commitment to the Choir, to our fellow singers and orchestra members, and to our indefatigable leader John Sinclair is this. We live in The Villages 75 miles from Winter Park. Given 50-55 rehearsals and concerts each year, we figure we’ve made nearly 900 roundtrips since 2008 to sing with the Choir, driven more than 130,000 miles, and certainly bought our fair share of the Florida Turnpike, SR 408, and I-4. Crazy committed to the Bach Society and the classical repertoire? Yup! You betcha!

What has kept us coming back week-after-week and year-after-year is the incredibly high quality of music, rehearsals, and performances we have experienced each season, thanks to the vocal talents of our fellow singers who range across the age spectrum, the outstanding performance skills and professional dedication to excellence among members of the Bach orchestra, and, of course, the leadership of John Sinclair who is unquestionably for us the finest teacher, inspiration, and choral and orchestral conductor for whom we have ever had the opportunity to sing. John’s multiple talents, his unwavering commitment to excellence, and his love and respect for each and every one of us are truly extraordinary and worth every mile and every late-hour arrival home after weekly and concert week rehearsals well after 10:00. John is absolute tops among the more than 30 conductors we’ve sung for during our more than three decades of singing masterworks from the choral repertoire.

Among John’s many skills as Bach Society’s Artistic Director is his understanding of the importance of selecting the finest soloists for each performance. As we have experienced over the years, and as John exquisitely understands, superb soloists are essential to superb performances of choral music, not only for the music that they personally sing, but also for how they inspire superb performances among their fellow soloists, choir members, and orchestra players. We have consistently been impressed with John’s choice of soloists for each work we have performed and with the quality and effectiveness of his professional interaction with them during rehearsals. He expects and gets performances from soloists that inspire all of us—both singers and players—to bring our A-game to every concert.

While annual fund contributions are critical to helping cover day-to-day operating expenses, the long-term future of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park lies in having sufficient endowment funds that John (and every Artistic Director who succeeds him) can go beyond the bare minimum and financially support ever-increasing excellence in its celebration and performance of the world’s greatest choral and orchestral music. Since the Society’s endowments are well managed, our two new endowments will grow in value, while simultaneously providing “draw-down dollars” each year for John and future Artistic Directors to go beyond the norm in their selection of soloists.

As the two of us now near the end of our singing with the Bach Festival Choir, we want to express both our personal gratitude for the opportunity to help make beautiful music over the years and our targeted recognition of the importance and the contributions of past and future soloists. With the full support of both John and the Society’s Board of Trustees, we have now established not one, but two soloist endowments, one for bass-baritone soloists last year and now a second one for soprano soloists. In addition, as a special touch, each of these endowments honors a specific soloist who has contributed significantly over the years to the quality of Bach Festival Society choral performances. Last year’s endowment honors and immortalizes Bass-Baritone Kevin Deas. This year’s new endowment honors and immortalizes Soprano Mary Wilson.

Particularly noteworthy for us is the fact that these two outstanding soloists bring our three decades of singing the world’s finest classical choral music full circle. Kevin Deas was the bass soloist when we sang what for us was a life-changing BCF performance of Brahms’ German Requiem in 1990. Mary Wilson is the soprano soloist as we sing our final Bach Festival Choir performances of Dvorak’s Stabat Mater at the end of the 2023-2024 season.

It is our hope that, over time, these two new soloist endowments will spark other Society supporters who love choral music and high-quality performances to fund comparable endowments for alto and tenor soloists, as well as for essential members of the orchestra, including its concert-master or concert-mistress and its first-chair instrumentalists.

With blessings of joy, peace, and beauty to all who are members of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park family, we thank you. Continue to grace the world with beautiful music.

Beth and Jack Nagle