September/October 2010
Alumni Corner
Hark! The Glee Club Alumni Sing
By Nicholas Rudd ’64, ’67 Business
For some of us, that special time was team sports or the arts, a compelling professor, student organizations or perhaps a close-knit group of classmates — that certain space of energy and devoted commitment that comes to mind when one thinks of the College each of us experienced in our time.
For me, it was the Columbia Glee Club in the early 1960s: a large, well-respected, all-male collegiate chorus that was the first college group to perform in Philharmonic (now Avery Fisher) Hall at Lincoln Center, received write-ups in The New York Times and brought Columbia’s name to high school kids in Westchester and alumni in the Midwest. I found joy in blending my voice with dozens of others, learning new music, making lifelong friends and having experiences I talk about to this day.
When I discovered that by the 2008–09 academic year the Glee Club had essentially faded away after several years of decline, I was forcefully reminded that things change. A part of Columbia that had been especially important to me was no longer there.
Working with the Student Development and Activities Office and a handful of alumni from my era, some dedicated, motivated students revived the Glee Club in 2009–10 and sang at December’s Tree-Lighting, put on the traditional Spring Concert on campus in April and performed “Stand, Columbia” at Commencement.
But what about the future?
When I attended my class’ 45th Alumni Reunion Weekend in 2009, I noted gatherings of alumni who had been on the Spectator staff or part of WKCR. These relatively new “vertical” receptions were an effort by the Alumni Office to reconnect alumni with each other and with Columbia through “affinity groups,” ongoing collectives of shared interest and activities.
The near-disappearance of the Glee Club suggested that its alumni were not aware of how much things had changed. Getting them together seemed to me like a good place to start. Other former Glee Clubbers, like Michael Garrett ’66, also thought a Glee Club affinity reception would be a good thing and had begun talking about having one. Former Dean of Alumni Affairs and Development Derek Wittner ’65 and Executive Director of Alumni Affairs Ken Catandella agreed. In 2010, Alumni Reunion Weekend/Dean’s Day would, for the first time, include an affinity reception for singers, open to anyone who had sung in any group while at Columbia.
Until then, affinity reunions had been planned as two-hour wine and cheese receptions on Saturday, between post-lunch class sessions and dinners. But Glee Club people sing!
So was born the notion of a performance by Glee Club alumni, preceded by enough rehearsal time to avoid undue embarrassment. We would sing for everyone attending reunion/Dean’s Day, or at least everyone who cared to listen. As it happened, no other singing group alumni organized to perform.
Fortunately, Jerry Weale ’57 and Bruce Trinkley ’66, both Glee Club alumni concerned with the club’s near-demise, had gone on from being associate directors of the Glee Club to distinguished careers as choral directors at Boston University and Penn State, respectively. Bruce had even led the Columbia Glee Club for a year.
They took on a daunting musical challenge: We don’t know who’s coming. We don’t know what shape their voices are in. We don’t know the balance of voice parts we’ll have. We don’t know the acoustics of the room where we’ll be singing. We want to put on a program both singers and audience will enjoy, but we only have 3½–4 hours for rehearsal across two days, and not all singers will be at both rehearsals. Now, what shall we sing?
Meanwhile, we needed to find some singers. Older alumni may remember how the yearbook included photos of various student organizations and identified participants by name. That practice stopped around 1970, with only occasional returns to that norm since. The Alumni Office had tagged some names in the University alumni database with activity codes, but the list was incomplete.
That realization kicked off several months of effort to identify 40 years of missing Glee Club alumni and to get their e-mail addresses. Efforts included days in the University Archives/Columbiana files (now part of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library), digging through concert programs and setting up a Facebook page. By reunion, we had identified more than 950 members, with more still to be found. But at least we had a start.
Over the course of the weekend, nearly 100 Glee Club alumni, representing College, SEAS, GS and Barnard classes from 1952–2010, showed up to rehearse, socialize and sing. A few days before the event, registrations exceeded room size and the performance was moved to the Roone Arledge Auditorium in Alfred Lerner Hall. An audience of more than 300 reunion-goers and singers’ families filled every seat in the house. Glee Club alumni filed in to sing together once more: Mozart, Orff, spirituals, folk songs, even a barbershop quartet. Plus College songs, of course.
And the sound! The sound of all those lovely lifted voices, male and female, ringing together off the walls! I lived a part of my life again that day when I sang the bass solo in “Set Down Servant,” as I had nearly 50 years before, even though my breath escaped and my voice broke as the emotions grabbed my throat. I know I wasn’t the only one feeling those emotions. I could see it in the faces and hear it in the voices.
ChorusAmerica, the choral trade association, has research showing that more adult Americans, 32 million of them, sing in choruses than participate in any other musical activity. That Columbia University Glee Club alumni across a span of nearly 60 years gathered to perform proved the point.
We made a CD of the performance, and listening to it afterward made me shake my head. These men and women had never sung together before. None of them had sung all the pieces on the program before. To sound as we did after four hours of rehearsal was pretty amazing.
Our special times in the Glee Club pulled us to gather and sing. We swapped stories about concerts and tours that brought Columbia’s name and Glee Clubbers to California, Puerto Rico, Canada and Europe. We spoke about the diminished place of today’s Glee Club on campus and its accomplishments in coming back last year against difficult odds. That led us to discuss what alumni might do to help today’s club prosper in the future. We’ve even started to talk about getting together to sing as a chorus of Columbia alumni.
We may have started something here.
For details on Glee Club alumni activities and/or to purchase the performance recording, visit www.cugcalums.com. If you did not receive e-mail messages about the Glee Club reunion performance and want to receive communications about alumni singing, send your name, school, class year and e-mail address to glee.club.alumni@columbia.edu.
Nicholas Rudd ’64, ’67 Business lives in Westport, Conn., and sings with the Greenwich Choral Society. He looks forward to singing again with a chorus of Columbia alumni.