Lloyd Walworth was only 30 years old when he decided to start a community choir in The Dalles.
Four decades later, the Cascade Singers are still going strong and will celebrate with a “Forty Years of Happy Singing” concert Saturday, June 4, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, June 5, at 3 p.m. in the same venue as their very first show — St. Peter’s Landmark.
Admission to the concert is by donation.
Walworth moved to The Dalles in 1972 to become the choir and assistant band director for the school district. He got the idea for the choir while singing in the local Handel’s Messiah production.
“There was no active community choir in the town and it’s a town that had the resources for something like that so some friends of mine, we all came together to start a choir.,” Walworth said.
Directed by Walworth, the first choir had 25 members—two tenors, two basses and the rest women — in their late 20s to early 30s.
“With those four [men], it was all we needed,” Walworth said. “These were really, really good singers.”
They had about a dozen practices at The Dalles High School before the first concert on May 17, 1976.
“It was very satisfying,” Walworth remembers. “We did a variety of stuff and it felt so fresh because we were all young.”
Of the first choir, only Walworth and Carolyn Thomas remain.
“He says we are going to be singing in the old folks home when we get there,” Thomas joked.
The choir is therapy for Thomas as well as adult bonding time.
“It’s a lot cheaper than going to a psychiatrist,” she said. “That’s what I always thought.”
Karl Vercouteren joined the choir in 1978 and he, Walworth, Thomas, Linda Pyles, Alan Swartz and Bette Nelson make up the Cascade Singers Ensemble, which will sing two songs during the 40th anniversary show — “Awake, Awake” by Johannes Brahms that was featured in the first concert in 1976, and “Tebe Poem”, a hymn by Dmitry Bortniansky that the choir performed at the “Christmas in Eastern Europe” concert in 1989.
The Cascade Children’s Choir, which started in 2013 under the leadership of Walworth and Corin Parker, will sing three songs by itself, including “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, and then join the main choir for three more tunes.
The concert will also feature violin, clarinet, cello, double bass, electric piano and percussion.
In recognition of 40 years of music, Walworth will close the concert by asking the audience to join in the singing of “Happy Birthday” and “Auld Lang Syne.”
Over the 40 years, the Cascade Singers have performed concerts, dinner theater and plays at St. Peter’s Landmark, TDHS, Zion Lutheran, St. Paul’s Episcopal, Calvary Baptist, Gateway Presbyterian, Riverenza, the lobby of the Wasco County Courthouse and even toured Europe.
“Part of my feeling of being in Cascade Singers allows me to be more connected to the world, not just with our travels but with the music and with other choirs coming from other places and connecting with them and them introducing music for us,” Thomas said. “I still email, Facebook people from those choirs, from all different places. Music connects us to the world and to each other.”
Walworth isn’t sure how much longer he’ll direct the choir but believes he’s got at least another 10 years in him. After all, he’s got to do something with the choral library that takes up a wall in his basement.
“We’ve got people in their 80s who are singing with us,” said Walworth, who just turned 70. “I want to keep doing it as long as I can, either as a conductor, or as a director. What we do is very collaborative. I wave my hand. I make decisions about phrasing and all that stuff. It has to be done but it is, in my head, completely collaborative, from the beginning and still now.”
Cascade Singers traditionally perform a holiday winter concert, a show in the spring and a benefit for St. Peter’s Landmark each St. Patrick’s Day.
Walworth is always looking for more singers. To audition, contact Walworth at 541-340-9858 or lloydwalworth@gmail. com.
“I’m dedicated to the choral art because it so fills my life,” Walworth said. “We come and we bless ourselves, really, by being together and sharing our music. We want people to feel engaged in the choral art, which takes us to a place we can’t go otherwise.”
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