On A Personal Note

Release date: July 23, 2009 |

On A personal Note

For more than a quarter of a century, Tom Hall, Goucher’s director of choral activities, has been introducing students one by oneto music of all kinds.

By Lindsay Stuart Hill '09 • Photos by Stan Rudick

Although the Goucher Chorus rehearsal has hardly begun its members are still answering roll call in Merrick Lecture Hall—director Tom Hall is already performing. Looking up with an endearing, Muppet-like smile, he engages each one as though bringing him into the group on a musical cue. After calling each name, he pauses to make conversation: How are you doing? Do you like all this snow? What do you think of Tom Daschle? By the time the task is fi nished, all eyes are on Hall.

“I think the role of a conductor should be to create a climate and a culture in which everybody on the stage can perform at his best, he says. It’s about the vibe that you set as you let people know your view about the music, and as you develop a sense of what the music means for each person.

As the director of choral activities at Goucher, Hall has been successfully fostering that climate at the college for 26 years. His ability to engage each singer personally helps nurture an environment in which each performer feels both challenged todo his best and comfortable enough to try new things, says Lura Clinton ’10, a communications major who joined the chorus in her fi rst year at Goucher. It makes you feel like he actually has interest invested in what we’re doing, she says. As much as he seems to care about music, he also seems to care about us.

“Tom is fun and engaging...but he’s also a serious In addition to his work at Goucher, Hall directs the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, a critically acclaimed collection of musical ensembles that perform in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond; guest-conducts orchestras across the country and in Europe; and presents weekly interviews with artists and cultural leaders on public radio station WYPR’s Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast.

“Tom is fun and engaging, and a very visible ‘local celebrity,’ but he’s also a serious, committed artist, says Kendall Kennison, chair of the music department. He’s in demand around the country as a choral conductor because of his ability to get strong, affecting performances from ensembles at all levels. He is able to do that because he has an artistic vision born of long study and thought, and he knows how to communicate this to his singers.

Since his arrival at Goucher in 1983, Hall has strengthened the choral program by, among other things, building upon its tradition of collaborations with other colleges. These days, the 30-member chorus performs three concerts a year, frequently with schools such as Wellesley College, Columbia University, the Johns Hopkins University, and the United States Naval Academy. The performances offer talented students an opportunity to sing classical pieces in large, orchestral settings, Hall says. (Students must audition to take part in the chorus, and it is offered as a class for credit.)

The director himself has been performing since the eighth grade, when he began playing his guitar at nightclubs. The son of a nurse and a sales manager for RCA records, Hall, with his parents and four younger brothers, moved seven times before he graduated from an Atlanta high school. Whether through performances at high school dances or in local venues, music offered him a reliable way to meet people. It exposed me to a whole community of people who were from other places besides high school, he says. Although he studied both guitar and piano in college, Hall gradually realized that he far preferred rehearsing with a group of people in a chorus to practicing alone on an instrument.

But it was the challenge of the unknown that initially drew him to classical music. For a performing artist, growth comes in taking big risks, he says. I think that taking risks is not only an opportunity for a performer, but a prerogative, he says. In a way, the safest place in the world [to do that] is on the stage, because audiences don’t want you to fail. You have to try to do things that just play on the energy of the moment. There’s a very palpable, demonstrable, feel-able sense of people in an audience when you’re on the stage. You know whether you’re succeeding or not.

Tom Hall at a glance

Born: Teaneck, NJ Jobs: Director of choral activities, Goucher College; music director, Baltimore Choral Arts Society; host, Choral Arts Classics, WYPR Radio; culture editor, Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast, WYPR Radio Wife: Linell Smith, senior writer, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions; longtime Goucher adjunct professor in the English Department Daughter: Miranda Hall, sophomore at Georgetown University Favorite Musical Work: B Minor Mass by J.S. Bach Awards: Emmy Award for Christmas with Choral Arts, WMAR Television, 2006; Best New Broadcast Journalist, Society of Professional Journalists, 2007; Gordon Medallion for Outstanding Contributions to Music,1998 Most Extraordinary Moment as Performer: Accompanying my daughter, when at age 8, she sang her fi rst professional solo

Artist. Kendall Kennison

Hall majored in musical education at Ithaca College and earned his master’s degree in conducting at Boston University (he later earned his doctorate in conducting from the University of Maryland, College Park.) After graduating from college, he held various singing and conducting positions in Massachusetts, including that of music director of the Concord Chorus and director of choral activities at the Longy School of Music. But when he moved to Baltimore in July 1982 to lead the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, something clicked. Baltimore is a good place to be an artist, he says. There is a lot going on, and there are a lot of opportunities.

Each year, Hall gives 30 concerts, 15 lectures, and 10 educational workshops with the Choral Arts Society. The 120-member ensemble performs both well-known pieces from the classical repertoire, as well as contemporary works. (For more than a quarter-century, the group has performed at least one world or local premiere each year.) In 2006, Hall won an Emmy for the Society’s program, Christmas with the Choral Arts.

No matter how familiar he is with each piece of music, Hall constantly fi nds new ways of approaching or hearing it. I’ve probably conducted Handel’s Messiah 80 times, he says. But there’s always somebody in the chorus or even somebody in the orchestra who’s never played it or never sung it, and there’s always somebody in the audience who’s never heard it live.

Like a singer chatting up the audience between songs, Hall frequently stops the Goucher chorus rehearsal to discuss subjects ranging from time signatures to pop culture. Ashlee Simpson or Bono may not seem to have much in common with Verdi or Mozart, but to the director, they’re all part of the musical continuum.

“As musicians, it’s incumbent on us to have an open mind about all music, he says. If the music is affecting, if the music is powerful to any individual at any time for any reason, then it’s valid. Whether contemplating the work of Bizet or Jay-Z, the key to understanding music is becoming familiar with its social and historical contexts, he adds.

His work as cultural editor at WYPR allows him to apply that philosophy to his on-air performances as he seeks to introduce listeners to all types and styles of art. On one day, he may interview a choreographer for Cirque du Soleil and a 13-year-old book illustrator. On another, he may discuss the work of award-winning poet and Goucher Professor Elizabeth Spires and a performance artist in town for the Transmodern Festival of Experimental Art.

Whatever the genre, Hall says, art can profoundly affect people’s lives. He hopes, for example, that when people listen to his chorus singing Dona Nobis Pacem (Latin for give us peace), they meditate on the meaning of the words. It all has to do with stories, he explains. It all has to do with narratives that shed light on what our experiences as human beings are. In a way, everything we do tells a story.

Since his arrival at Goucher in 1983, Hall has strengthened the choral program by, among other things, building upon its tradition of collaborations with other colleges.