Twenty years after the Flin Flon Community Choir (FFCC) was first formed, the choral group is still going strong – in fact, they are doing better than ever, said Crystal Kolt, the choir’s artistic director and conductor.
“Our choir has never sounded so good,” she said. “And I don’t say that lightly at all. We have so many strong singers, and people who have had a lot of training.”
Next weekend, the choir’s many current and former members will take a moment to celebrate the organization’s accomplishments over two thrilling decades.
On Sunday, May 28, the choir will present its 20th anniversary concert, a retrospective highlighting the choir’s major performances and the voices that have contributed to its history.
A number of former choir members will return to Flin Flon to perform as soloists, such as Robbin Fontaine, who will reprise a piece he sang in the choir’s first musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, in 1997.
Kolt said the show will also include a tribute, sung by Lisa Highmoor, honouring the choir members who have passed away since the group’s inception in 1996.
During intermission, marked-up and well-loved conductors’ scores from shows gone by will be exhibited: hard evidence of 20 years of musical growth.
After celebrating the choir’s past, the singers of the FFCC will switch tracks with a performance of “Lux Aeterna,” the complex composition the singers will perform in June at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, alongside other choral groups.
Jonathan Griffith, a prominent conductor based in New York, will travel to Flin Flon to lead the choir in this performance – a rare treat.
Griffith is the co-founder, artistic director and principal conductor with Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY) and has led performances all over the world. He directed the choir in their 2013 performance of Handel’s Messiah in New York and will be directing them again this June.
“That alone, that someone of his calibre is conducting the concert [in Flin Flon], it tickles me,” said Kolt, beaming.
“He wants to see what’s happening here [in Flin Flon] and he just fell in love with the group.”
Griffith will spend Saturday, May 27 working with choir members in an intensive all-day workshop. Crystal said anyone interested in learning more about vocal training is welcome to attend and learn as well.
“He’s going to do so many things with us. He’s going to teach instant sight singing, musicality, tricks of the trade....there’s a whole level of richness that you can gain from people of this quality,” she said.
Griffith’s visit to Flin Flon marks the latest of many milestones in the choir’s development.
The Idea
The seed of an idea for the community choir was planted in 1996, when Kolt was asked to organize a choir to sing at the funeral of Murray Davidson. Davidson had been an active member of the Flin Flon Glee Club, a local
theatre group.
Kolt and her husband, Mark, both musicians with bachelor of music degrees, gladly accepted.
As they assembled a group, the Kolts soon discovered a number of singers in the community who were interested in performing together as a choir.
“There was an energy and an excitement,” said Crystal.
Soon, Mark and Crystal started pulling together a team of people to make the group a reality.
When the choir performed their first major piece, Schubert’s “Mass in G,” they were received with enthusiasm.
“I was surprised that people came. There was a full audience,” said Crystal.
“There was almost this blessing over everything.”
With every news article, and every full show, the choir gained more confidence to explore new territory. Crystal accessed connections in the musical world to find opportunities for the choir to perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the Saskatoon Symphony, and the expectations for the little choir from Flin Flon began to grow.
In 1997, the choir mounted its first musical theatre production, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. With a budget close to $5,000, Crystal said the production team learned to be resourceful and thrifty.
“Someone had the great idea to go to the hotels and see if they were throwing out old sheets….so we got all these sheets and that’s how we made a lot of the costumes,” she recalled with a laugh.
Eighteen years later, the choir’s most recent production, Les Misérables, was an exponentially larger affair, with a $50,000-plus budget, professional sound and light technicians, and a pit orchestra. Les Mis marked another major milestone when the FFCC hired a professional director and fight choreographer to lead the show.
“Knowing full well that we had to learn, I was careful to choose someone [director Ann Hodges] who would know that we are learning, [and to whom we could say], ‘Don’t lower the bar, keep the bar as high as you can for us, and let’s see if we can reach it,’” Crystal recalled.
“That’s been the model from the beginning. There are these challenges that are really so much fun to see, and we kind of have the formula now. The formula is hard work, and a lot of it.”
One of those bar-raising challenges came when Kolt started to look at integrating a professional orchestra pit into an FFCC musical for the first time.
“We knew that, absolutely from the first, the pit had to be as professional and as solid as possible because all the new things happening above it, the singing and the staging, had to be supported by the music,” Crystal explained.
Although the artistic benefits were clear, the choir struggled to find a workable business model to support hiring skilled musicians.
In 2004, the choir took the leap with the production of Follies, and as with every other challenge the choir has faced, they found a way through.
“You have to bite away at it, bit by bit, until you come up with your solutions, and you can’t do it haphazardly. You really have to do a lot of homework,” Crystal said.
Connections
Crystal connected with universities and chamber orchestras in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan to recruit musicians who were up to the task. Once they were hired, she thought carefully about ways to give each musician an experience in Flin Flon that would nourish them artistically and personally, and keep them coming back for future productions.
The generosity of local billets helped make this a reality.
“We would have a violinist staying with Alistair Callegari, who makes violins,” Crystal explained. “That word spread, and then even if they weren’t able to come, they told their colleagues, ‘This is a good gig – do it.’”
With the choir’s 1999 production of Bombertown, a musical written by Mark Kolt, the choir hired professional sound and light technicians, a practice they have continued for each production since.
As choir members have continued to step up their game, performing more challenging pieces and mounting larger stage productions, active members – about 70 currently – have had to make personal decisions about the commitment they are willing to make to their art.
Crystal said having a professional director for Les Misérables brought this issue to the forefront.
“A huge challenge was having our organization learn whether they were willing to learn to be at that professional-quality level. I knew that would be a shake-up,” she said.
While not everyone can afford the time needed to participate in community choir productions, Crystal says she has always aimed to keep the door open.
“If you need to take a break, you take a break, but know you’re always part of the choir, you’ll always be a member of the choir,” she said.
Reunion
After 20 years, there are numerous community members, past and present, whose lives have been touched by the choir at some point. Crystal is hoping that the 20th anniversary concert will be something of a reunion for them.
“We’ve put the word out to all our choristers in the past, to come back and celebrate with us. Every one of these people have done something spectacular, to help us get to this level...there are all these bricks that we’ve stuck together to build this up,” she said.
Central to that structure is a core team that keeps everything moving forward – from stage management and costumes to email lists and organizing billets for visiting musicians. “They make the family run,” Crystal said.
Crystal is also quick to give credit to her husband, Mark, the choir’s musical director, who has nurtured the growth of the choir and many spin-off groups as well.
“In all honesty, I couldn’t have done it without Mark, because we needed that solid, grounded talent, and he just doesn’t stop,” Crystal said. “He has done so much to build up the choir and so much of the music in the area.”
Local and visiting experts have also been key to the choir’s success, Crystal said.
“You have to not be afraid to seek expertise, and advice.”
Recent sources of expertise have included Mel Braun, a University of Manitoba professor who has provided vocal coaching for choir members both in-person and over Skype, and Flin Flon band teachers Kim Jones and Anna Jardine, who bring current best practices in musical instruction to the group.
Relationships are a key part of what makes the Flin Flon Community Choir special to its members. With a supportive network in place, FFCC members are well positioned to strive for bigger and bolder goals as the organization embarks on its third decade.
