Shadle Park choir director retiring
Choir director Randy Fink is retiring from Shadle Park High School with the distinction of being the longest-serving choir director in the history of the high school.
His career dating back 32 years will have its final curtain call in a concert at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the high school auditorium.
“I’ve had great students over the years,” Fink said, and members of school staff were “very supportive,” which made his job easier.
Fink singled out longtime band director Kevin Hartse for their collaboration and mutual support over the years.
Fink is a 1972 Shadle graduate who went to Plains, Montana, for his first music teaching job after graduating from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in music education in 1976.
He returned to Spokane in 1983 to take the Shadle choir job and later earned a master’s degree in music education from Eastern Washington University.
Teaching choir is something Fink said he always wanted to do, and his career has been a rewarding one.
He followed his father, Eugene Fink, who was longtime choir director at Mead High School.
Fink said the best challenge for him was producing musical theater, in which the choir members become actors as well as singers and the director has to take on the task of putting a show together.
He said “Into the Woods” was his favorite musical. It is a take on Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
Other musicals that he produced include “Camelot,” “Oliver” and “Brigadoon.”
“I enjoyed doing musicals,” he said.
His top students have performed on Broadway, studied opera and become music educators.
Fink and his wife, Cathy, are high school sweethearts who met at Shadle. They have two children.
Fink said the advent of mobile phones has changed student behavior. Now, it is more difficult to get them to stop their phone use and concentrate on the music before them, but he has managed to do that each day.
Among his best moments was seeing the old auditorium renovated as part of the wider improvements at Shadle several years ago, Fink said.
“Our auditorium is gorgeous. The sound is fantastic,” he said.