On a weeknight in Colorado's North Fork Valley, thirty people climb into their cars and drive — sometimes an hour each way — to stand in a room and sing... together. They are teachers, farmers, winemakers. Some couldn't read music when they started. None of them are paid.
Brent Helleckson has been watching this happen for years. As director of the North Fork Community Chorus, he's learned not to take it for granted. "They're coming from real lives that have real issues," he says. A difficult day in the classroom. A troubling medical diagnosis. Worry about work, about home. And then they walk through the door and set it all down.
Helleckson believes there's a neurological reason music makes that possible. Singing, he says, may be the most mentally demanding thing a person can do — leaving no bandwidth for anything else. For two hours, there are only the next six notes.
The chorus has been part of the North Fork since the mid-1980s, coming and going with the people who've carried it. Helleckson's daughter restarted it before moving on to direct an orchestra in Washington state. Now he leads it, with his wife at the piano and his son in the ranks of the chorus. It is, he says, a reflection of a community that wants this kind of music as part of who they are.
Their upcoming concert is built around that idea — works by Haydn, Fauré, and Franz Biebl alongside pieces by living composers, all chosen for their power to bring people together.
The North Fork Community Chorus performs April 11th at the Delta United Methodist Church in Delta and April 12th at West Hill Community Church in Paonia. Both concerts begin at 5 o'clock.
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