Festival shares music, celebrates generosity

This Saturday, the Crescendo Community Chorus and three middle school choirs will perform a free concert as the culmination of the second annual Dilworth Choral Festival, with Tom Shelton conducting.

“It is a very unusual event,” said Crescendo’s artistic director Sharon Rodkey Smith. “Not many organizations are able to work with such wonderful people just out of their kindness. Because of that, I feel compelled to share the kindness with our community.”

The festival is named for its original conductor and benefactor, Rollo Dilworth. Smith founded the festival after Dilworth offered to work with her youth choirs for free.

At first, Smith said she didn’t feel like she could accept his generosity. As a composer and music education chair at Temple University, Dilworth has guest conducted honor and festival choirs throughout the country and abroad.

“I told him, ‘I can’t afford you,’ ” she said, noting that Crescendo follows the original mission it had when founded in 2003 as South Hill Children’s Chorus under the direction of Lynn Brinkmeyer, then-chair of the Eastern Washington University Music Department – to give children a quality choral experience regardless of economic circumstance.

When Brinkmeyer moved to Texas, Smith had just returned to Spokane after years directing youth choirs in Tacoma and Nebraska. Not ready to retire, she took over the South Hill Children’s Chorus, which was renamed Kindercor of Spokane before becoming Crescendo Community Chorus when it established nonprofit status in 2013.

With a semester’s tuition at $120 and $160 for the preparatory and concert choirs, respectively, Smith said they have a limited budget with no excess to fund a festival.

“No one is turned away because they can’t sing or can’t pay,” she said, adding that she told Dilworth “I can’t afford to bring in a clinician when I can barely pay for music.”

“He looked at me and said, ‘This is something I want to do. I believe in small programs like yours and I want to be an encouragement,’ ” she said.

To share his expertise, Smith contacted several school choral programs, with Glover, Sacajawea and Salk Middle Schools participating last year.

“It was an amazing experience. Rollo is magic,” said Smith, describing how Dilworth said he wanted to be a benefactor so she could continue the festival, offering frequent flyer miles if Smith could find a choral conductor who would donate their time and stay in her guest room like he had.

“I started to cry,” said Smith of her reaction to Dilworth’s offer.

Smith met Tom Shelton while working at the North Carolina Summer Institute for Choral Arts and recruited him to conduct this year’s festival.

“How lucky am I? He’s kind of a big deal,” she said. Shelton is president-elect of the American Choral Directors Association, head of sacred music at Westminster Choir College and works with the Princeton girls’ choir, as well as conducting at numerous choral festivals.

On Friday, Shelton will work with choirs at Rogers and North Central high schools where, Smith said, he can help the choirs polish music before next week’s choral adjudication.

“Tom is a cheerleader, inspiration and technician. They will learn a lot but feel good about what they’re doing,” she said.

Friday afternoon, Shelton will meet and greet area music conductors, then work with the Crescendo choirs in the evening.

On Saturday, he’ll run clinics with choirs from Glover, Garry and Sacajawea middle schools as well as the Crescendo choristers.

Opening the festival to area schools, said Smith, is a way to share his expertise with more youth while helping support Spokane school choral programs.

“It’s my way of sharing with the musical community. I feel so fortunate that these kids get to work with someone of that integrity,” she said. “He’ll be able to give the kids inspiration. He’s a fine technician about style and the way the voice should be used.”

Spokane Public Schools is donating the cost of an accompanist as well as a stage crew and facility use.

Shelton will work with the choirs individually and together, with the festival culminating with a free performance for the community.

That concert will include a performance of a composition Shelton wrote for a North Carolina honor choir last fall, said Smith as well as “Walk to Jerusalem,” a Dilworth gospel composition.

By the end of the festival, Smith said, “the kids will feel good that they are part of the singing experience. They will walk away being affirmed in their decision to be a singer.”