Tucson choir celebrates 40th season with 'greatest hits' holiday concert

As one of the longest serving, if not the longest serving, members of Arizona Repertory Singers, the job of dusting off 30 years of the group’s 40 years of programs to create the holiday concert lineup fell to Nadeen Jahn.

She went through concert programs and notes dating back to 1990, when her late husband Jeffry Jahn took over the then six-year-old ensemble from its founder, Dennis Bonner, to find the right mix for the first of the choir’s two 40th anniversary events.

There were a lot of programs.

Under Jahn’s 25 years at the podium, the conductor and his volunteer choir performed five or six concerts a year including fall and spring concerts, a holiday show and, for a time, a Father’s Day concert, Nadeen Jahn recalled.

“The desire was, as the name Arizona Repertory Singers suggests, is that we have this large repertoire. Throughout these concerts, since we did so many, he would bring things we’d done in the past and we would sing a couple songs from the spring concert on the fall concert, and from the fall to the spring,” said Jahn, a soprano. “There was this constant bringing back of things that were a little bit familiar so that we could do a lot of newer works.”

Jahn compiled a spreadsheet of songs that she turned over to a committee that included longtime chorister Angela Hagen. The committee whittled that list to 20 or so songs, which they turned over to Conductor Ryan Phillips to create the program for the December holiday concert. The group also will perform a spring gala next April, during which they will honor Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus Director Julian Ackerley and Tucson Girls Chorus Director Marcela Molina.

“This year is really special because audiences will hear music that everyone has heard Arizona Repertory Singers perform before,” said Phillips, who came on board in 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic put live entertainment on hold for more than a year. “It’s a celebration of who we are and the music that we’ve brought to this community.”

Changes and constants

Today’s Arizona Repertory Singers might look a lot different from the group Bonner assembled as a University of Arizona choral conducting graduate student in 1984. But the overriding philosophy has remained — there is “nothing more transformative than the human voice lifted in song,” according to its website statement.

Under Jeffry Jahn, Arizona Repertory Singers grew from six or seven vocalists to 32, performing full seasons of concerts that borrowed from great works in the Renaissance and Classical periods through to the the Great American Songbook and contemporary pop.

On the holiday concerts like the one they have planned for Dec. 9-10 and 17, you’d have John Rutter’s “What Sweeter Music” alongside songs by Bach and Mendelssohn; Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium” contrasting the 17th century Catalan Christmas carol “Fum, Fum, Fum;” the traditional carol “Hark! (the Herald Angels Sing)” alongside Steven Landau’s engaging reimagining “Hark! in 7/8,” which ARS says was a hit with audiences the last two years.

Also on the program: “Masters in This Hall,” based on texts from 19th century English poet William Morris and Shawn Kirchner’s “Brightest and Best,” his reimagining of the 1880s Christmas carol “Star in the East.”

“I’m excited because all of these are wonderful pieces of music that we have sung well and that audience have responded to,” said Hagen, an alto who joined the choir in 1991 and did its marketing and public relations for a number of years. “They are kind of things we should be singing and the community should be hearing.”

Hagen was a features editor at the Tucson Citizen when she joined the choir. Her story, she says, is like most of her fellow choristers: Singing had always been a part of her life until adulting got in the way. Then one day she realized there was something missing in her life, so she auditioned — unlike many community ensembles at the time, ARS was and is an auditioned choir — and landed in the Alto 2 group.

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“I think what happens is people decide they need to get music back in their lives,” said the 1982 UA graduate who worked at the Citizen until 1998. “This is music being made locally by local people. The true meaning of amateur is that people are doing it because they love it. The pure love of it.”

When Bonner formed the choir, there weren’t a lot of community groups performing. But in the 40 years since, Tucson has seen a tremendous growth in the genre, with the professional True Concord Voices & Orchestra launching 20 years ago and the Helios Ensemble starting up in 2014.

While some groups may long to land on a bigger stage, Phillips said his group of singers, ranging in age from 26 to 85, “just love to sing and love to be with each other.”

That doesn’t mean the group doesn’t aspire to perform at the high level of their fellow ensembles.

“I think ARS traditionally has been positioned as not just a community chorus but a chorus that aspires to something a little bit higher than just ‘y’all come and sing,’” Hagen said.

But Phillips said the goal at the end of the day is to maintain the singers’ love of singing.

That love waned a bit in the years after Jahn died suddenly in 2015. The group went through an interim director until the ARS Board of Directors hired a permanent replacement. The new director came in with a vision to expand the group’s repertoire to include more challenging works. And while the group welcomed the challenge and grew musically, they felt the director was pushing them too hard and zapping the joy and passion they brought to the choir.

After three years, the director left and the board tapped Phillips, a Tucson native and former member of the Tucson Boys Chorus who had just finished his doctoral degree in choral conducting from Northern Arizona University.

Phillips, the 32-year-old father of toddler twins, attracted younger singers to audition, bringing a new vitality and energy to the ensemble.

“I brought back the enjoyment of singing,” he said. “I love that this group just loves to sing and loves to be with each other.”

Hagen said she remembers those years after Jahn’s passing. His death jolted the group, but it didn’t sway them.

“I don’t think it ever felt like it was going to be the end,” she said. “We regrouped ... (and) got together, grieved and mourned, and came out of there saying this group is bigger than Jeffry Jahn and we mean something to each other. We felt like maybe we didn’t know how we were going to go on, but we came out that first week after his death feeling that this organization means something to everyone and to the community, as well.”

“The group has been through some stuff and that were still together and singing and making great music warms my heart every week,” she added.

Arizona Repertory Singers will perform their holiday concert, “What Sweeter Music: 40 Years with ARS,” on Dec. 9 at Desert Skies United Methodist Church, 3255 N. Houghton Road; on Dec. 10 at Christ Church United Methodist, 655 N. Craycroft Road; and on Dec. 17 at St. Mark Catholic Church, 2727 W. Tangerine Road in Oro Valley. Tickets are $18 in advance at arsingers.org or $20 at the door.