THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603200046
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
IT'S SUNSET for the Daybreak Singers if another nimble-fingered pianist doesn't turn up soon.
So long, oldies, show tunes, patriotic ditties. Goodby palazzo pants, sequined jackets and snappy red coats. No more tongue-in-cheek questions like this for director Maggie Harrington:
``On page 3 and 4, do you want the proper timing, or the proper notes?''
And worst of all, no more Rockette-style, high-kicking chorus line.
``We are needing a pianist really badly,'' said Barbara Marchman, president of the all-female performing group. ``Anytime we have no pianist we are really in trouble. But we knew we'd have to start searching again.''
They always do and, for 22 years, they've always found one.
The area chorus, made up of spouses of active-duty and retired military members, has a constantly changing cast of characters. After all, military dependents are experts on filling in the gaps when people leave and in making newcomers feel like old friends. Over the years, membership has waxed and waned - once it was down to eight singers. Now there are a dozen. But in a group like this, where a performance depends on the rapport between pianist, director and singers, losing an accompanist is a big crisis.
And when new singers turn up at meetings for the first time and reveal they can also play, as Kathy Palmer did recently, it almost causes a riot.
``I'm an alto,'' she said, and after a pregnant pause, ``and a piano player.''
Once the cheers died down, she confessed, ``I'd really rather sing.''
For the past three years, Gail Blanton has tickled the ivories for the group in nursing homes, community centers, at ship's parties, military wives' luncheons. In one 18-day stretch this past holiday season she called ``really wild,'' they performed 19 times. Blanton and her fingers were there.
But the Virginia Beach resident's husband is retiring this June, and they're moving. New applicants for the piano bench, she advises, should be flexible.
``You have to be able not to mind jumping in with both feet and taking a stab at it,'' she said.
You've also got to love oldies no matter how young you are. With Harrington leading, the group bounces from a 1921 Dixieland tune, ``Ma (He's Makin' Eyes at Me),'' to a medley of old commercial jingles to the sweet, goose-bump-raising harmony of ``Sincerely,'' made popular by the McGuire Sisters in 1955.
The group started off a recent rehearsal with ``Tweedlee Dee,'' a 1954 hit by Laverne Baker. That year, the youngest member of the chorus, Twyla Fadley, wasn't even yet a tweedlee-dee in her mother's eye.
Fadley is leaving the group, too, in a few months when her husband retires and they move out of state. She's sung with them for six years and is now 32.
``It's breaking my heart,'' said the Virginia Beach resident. ``It's one of the things I will miss the most. I'll miss entertaining other people.''
Like many others in the chorus, Fadley has no formal musical training. She sang in her high school glee club. Many of the other women sing in their church choirs.
One works full-time and can't come to practices, so the group tapes their rehearsals and she listens to the recordings on her car stereo. Thank goodness, say the other women, she was a music major and catches on fast.
Thanks to donations by the community, the singers bought a synthesizer and take the portable keyboard with them to performances along with those snappy jackets and palazzo pants.
The women estimate their membership to range in age from the early 30s to the late 50s. They rehearse at 9:30 on Thursday mornings at St. Andrews Methodist Church in Kempsville and then follow up with lunch.
Lunch, confide some members, plays a close second to singing. Some days it's hard to tell what they enjoy most - the music or the friendship.
``Oh, we absolutely entertain each other,'' said Kathy Hollowood, who books the group's performances. She's booking now for September and keeping one eye out for stray pianists.
``We're keeping our fingers crossed,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Barbara Marchman, left, president of the group, and Penny Radd
converse during a practice session. ``We are needing a pianist
really badly,'' Marchman says.
by CNB