The Tucson Boys Chorus

YEARS YOUNG THE TUCSON BOYS CHORUS

It always sounded pretty good to me, 25 to 30 young voices soaring gloriously in four-part harmony through yet another choir practice-but what did I know? I was just a kid.

Suddenly, some tiny flaw would offend the exacting ear of Eduardo Caso, creator of the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus. As he stopped directing, his disappointment would wash over us.

Our Mr. Caso was an accomplished radio tenor of the 1930s. Everyone thought this transplanted Englishman bore a Hispanic surname, but actually it came from the French "Cazeaux." His Dominican mother provided the Latino element.

Suffering severe tuberculosis, Eduardo Caso had fled the East Coast in 1937 to recuperate in the sunny, dry climate of Tucson, population 35,000.

With his own performing career tragically ended before he was 40, he resolved to devote the rest of his life to making music the hard way-assembling and refining a crew of rambunctious boys, roughly ages 9 through 14, from all sorts of backgrounds.

A lot of us were accepted into his tutelage with scarcely more talent than the ability to carry a tune. Some boys came from Tucson's leading families, and civic clubs underwrote many expenses; but a good share of the parents really scraped to pay the $50 annual tuition.

Often in those early days, mothers would hurriedly set an extra place if Mr. Caso just happened to show up at dinnertime to discuss our progress.

"Half the time, he'd also have a bag of laundry in the car. We had a new front-loading automatic," recalls John Stuart Davis, a choirboy of the late '40s. Davis had no inkling that he would grow up to direct the chorus himself for five years.

Mr. Caso, although eternally patient and kind, was surely as authoritarian as any English school headmaster he'd encountered in his own youth. That must be where the paddle came from, too. For Mr. Caso'sbenevolent spirit had limits. He remedied behavior problems with swats from a wooden paddle the size of a cricket bat. For most of us, I'm grateful to add, the paddle was more threat than thwack. If rehearsals went badly, we recognized that Mr. Caso was nearing utter exasper ation when he evoked that quaint British expression: "Ye gods and little fishes!" "Will you concentrate!" came next. So we would sing the passage again. And again. And as many times as it took to get the song exactly right.

benevolent spirit had limits. He remedied behavior problems with swats from a wooden paddle the size of a cricket bat. For most of us, I'm grateful to add, the paddle was more threat than thwack. If rehearsals went badly, we recognized that Mr. Caso was nearing utter exasper ation when he evoked that quaint British expression: "Ye gods and little fishes!" "Will you concentrate!" came next. So we would sing the passage again. And again. And as many times as it took to get the song exactly right.

This chorus, after all, was destined for world renown. Kids like me, growing up in Tucson from the time it was little more than a cowtown, would collectively achieve international glory rivaling that of the 450-year-old Vienna Choir Boys. Mr. Caso said so. And lo, he made it so.His successors have continued doing so to this day.

At age 50, the Tucson Boys Chorus stands as one of America's oldest community-based boy choirs. It ranks as far and away the nation's most widely traveled and performed group of its kind. The chorus has embarked on one or more concert tours every year since the end of World War II, sometimes for 10 to 12 weeks at a time. Known as Arizona's "singing ambassadors in Levi's," the troupe has earned the praise of reviewers nationwide and throughout Europe, Can ada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan.

This spring the boys are off to concerts in the Soviet Union, Poland, East and West Germany-and yes, the home of the Vienna choir itself, the capital of Austria. The Tucson group, however, is quite different from the Vienna Choir Boys. The Austrian institution is a full-time school. Tucson's boys start their season at a summer camp packed with equal portions of choir practice and outdoor funin the pines of nearby Mount Lemmon. From then on, they rehearse several times a week at the chorus hall.

Like the Vienna boys, the Arizonans open their concerts angelically attired in flowing vestments. Both groups have mastered many complex religious and classical works. The Tucsonans, however, depart much farther into other fare.

Their variety ranges from an entire segment of Western songs and exhibitions of trick roping, performed in spiffy dude ranch outfits against a backdrop of desert scenery, to choreographed show tunes and patriotic medleys.

The boys also perform folk songs and anthems of the countries they're visiting.

"We don't have any grand illusions of going abroad and bowling them over with our great expertise as a European-style boys choir," says Julian M. Ackerley, who has directed the chorus for the last decade. "That's not what we're trying to be."

Even if you've never heard of, much less heard, the Tucson Boys Chorus, you have to admire its vitality on several fronts: cultural, educational, and promotional.

Considering that it's a nonprofit orga nization not affiliated with a church or school, that it has received no governmen tal subsidy for many years, that it has had only four directors since its inception, and that its entire membership changes every few years, I think it quite remarkable that this durable institution has progressed so far on its way to outliving its members.

As some of the choir's most ardent supporters tell it, the positive image of Tucson projected everywhere by these youngsters must surely be the principal reason the city has burgeoned into a thriving community of more than 600,000.

Exaggerations aside, one of the former directors, Jeffrey Haskell, observes: "I'm not sure the city has ever fully realized the international, national, and grass-roots local publicity that the chorus has gar nered for it. When the curtain opens and that group is seen, there is no city council anywhere that could afford that kind of publicity coup."

The effects are just as profound on a personal level. Hundreds of alumni, their ages now spanning college to retirement years, assembled from all over the country for the choir's 50th anniversary celebration last October. Uniformly they declared that their chorus experience had been the most enduring influence of their lives, aside from their parents.

I learned a lot of things in the chorus from 1951 through its first European concert tour in 1955: music, intricate teamwork, self-confidence, trick roping, enough collective showmanship to charm an audience right out of its seats. But most of all, I learned what it means to concentrate. You have to practice it. And ye gods and little fishes, did we practice!

Perhaps my older brother, the diplomat, was born with a world view-but it was the choir that gave him the opportunity to hit the road at age 10 and start finding out what actually was out there. By the time he was 14, Curtis had visited most states of the Union.

His wanderlust has never subsided, even though world travel as a deputy assistant secretary of state can be more wearing than rewarding. (As part of President Bush's entourage to Poland and Hungary last year, at least he didn't have to ride a bus all day and give a show that night, as the chorus often does. "It's not too different, though," he muses.) Another distinguished alumnus is Peter Ronstadt, Tucson's police chief. His sister Linda is the more famous singer in this pioneer Tucson family-but I'll bet she can't deliver a mournful coyote howl like Pete did on cue every time the chorus sang "Blue Shadows on the Trail."

Thirty-five years later, Ronstadt reflects: "I can't imagine a stronger influence than the chorus. Over and above the broadening experience you got from traveling, the chorus also taught you responsibility and mental discipline."

Plus other discipline. Ronstadt confesses that over three years, he provoked his share-"probably less than 20"-of Mr. Caso's swats. "If you screwed up, there were going to be consequences," the police chief says, lamenting that his present adversaries somehow missed that message. "To me, it makes a lot of sensealthough I can't imagine that form of discipline being used today."

A few alumni of the chorus graduated into music careers. George Chakiris won an Oscar for his performance in West Side Story. A lad named John Deutschendorf, whose photograph appears next to mine in an aging concert program, made something of himself as John Denver, even though he left the choir before having a chance to tour.

Clearly, though, the boys chorus inspires far more than musical talent.

"A significant number of people who went through that experience wound upbeing pretty good at whatever it was they decided to do with their lives," observes Ronstadt.

BOYS CHORUS

Most of all, I think, the choir imbued every one of us with a lifelong sense of quality and the effort required to achieve it. For Director Ackerley, that remains one of the primary goals.

"Our mission basically takes two forms," he says. "First is the educational experience for the youngster, including positive reinforcement for building selfesteem and pride, which in turn develop a good citizen.

"In the artistic and musical area," Ackerley continues, "I think we need to be realistic about the demands of the entertainment dollar in the 1990s. We market ourselves as family entertainment that is appealing to all audiences-from high-brow to backwoods."

Eduardo Caso suffered a heart attack in 1965, two months before the chorus was scheduled to make its most important nationwide television appearance up to that time. He went to a hospital for a few hours, but left to conduct a Saturday morning rehearsal. Three days later, his heart stopped. He was 65.

Sadly, he had made no provisions for

anyone to succeed him-but how could he? Who else would singlemindedly commit himself to a boys choir as the maestro had done for 26 years?

Had it not been for a doctoral student in music, the Tucson Boys Chorus might have died with its founder.

Jeff Haskell had met Caso for the first time at that final rehearsal. Suddenly, at age 24, he was the man in charge. Thinking he would take only a semester's break from school, Haskell agreed to guide the choir through its television appearance and 53-concert winter tour. The semester lengthened into 10 years in the job and the fulfillment of one of Caso's dreams: building for the chorus a headquarters of its own.

Another of the founder's dreams-to have an alumnus carry on his work-came true when John Davis succeeded Haskell as director. Not everything worked out, however. Davis and the chorus board of trustees wound up in a court dispute over his contract. Davis won. By the time of the jubilee, though, there were no scars evident on either side.

Today's boys chorus differs in some respects from the one I knew, partly because in this age of electronic home entertainment, show business is constantly challenged to attract people to any sort of live performance.

Haskell recalls that in 1967, the management company scheduling the choir's concerts warned that touring dates would soon dwindle to nothing. He and successors proved the experts wrong. "You're looking at something here that will weather the test of time, because it's just too, too good," Haskell says.

Now operating with a staff of four, the chorus books all of its own tours. Ackerley has shifted as much as possible away from an exhausting road show of nightly concerts in cities hundreds of miles apart. Instead, the choir tries to spend several days in one city, doing school performances and workshops, as well as community concerts.

These days the boys are expected to keep up with their schoolwork while traveling. In my day, we were tutored when we came home.

And the paddle is gone. Davis phased way back on using it, and Ackerley put it aside in 1980, substituting one word that could have equal effect: "Gentlemen!" Given a pool of 150 talented singers competing for 28 touring slots, he doesn't hesitate to expel the occasional hard-core troublemaker.

(Tomfoolery is something else, of course. Neither the director nor two chaperones known as "choir mothers" who help the boys on tour can possibly Choristers spend a week each summer at Camp Lawton on Mount Lemmon. (OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Patrick Curry, Charlie Kent, and Chris McCaleb take their turn at kitchen-police duty; members practice choreography for the weekend concert; campers roast marshmallows; singers in the intermediate group rehearse "All Things Bright and Beautiful"; Jonathan Thwaits and Ralph Miller at archery class; the roping team demonstrates a trick called "stargazing."

They know all of the antics going on behind their backs.) The biggest difference today-miracle of miracles-is that Ackerley has kept the organization in the black for several years. It's the first time the choir has been as financially sound as it is artistically polished.

Ackerley clearly has the right business touch, but he gives most of the credit to community patronage. In a matter of weeks, he points out, Tucsonans provided $90,000 to send the choir to China in 1987. Decades of tin-cup begging by directors; generations of choirboys selling countless "Bonanza Books" of merchants' discount coupons; endless fund-raising by parents in such activities as operating a Christmas tree lot-all have finally paid off with solidcommunity backing.

BOYS CHORUS

Several things haven't changed a bit. The parents still are more devoted than their children will ever appreciate (until they have kids of their own). Sue Peyron is one. With two sons in different levels of chorus participation, she does double duty shuttling them to all their practice sessions and performances. Moreover, she chairs the organization's parents group.

Her wholehearted commitment, Peyron says, is best explained in the words of a fellow parent: "I want to pay the chorus back for what they've given to my son." Tuition, only $200 to $400 per member, "is very low considering what the boys get," she notes. "You couldn't buy that anywhere else for a million times that amount."

Also unchanged is the perspective of the choirboys themselves.

Antonio Cooper, a 14-year-old alto, allows: "Well, practice isn't my favorite thing, but you have to go, so...." Struggling alone through math problems in a motel room is tough, too.

Still, he leaves no doubt it's all worthwhile. "I like to perform, and I like working on the different types of musicespecially the ones in different languages," Antonio says. "Most of all, I just like to be up there singing. It gives me a really good feeling to do the shows."

"And get all that applause?" I interject. "Yeah! Yeah, I like it a lot!" he beams. (Enjoy it while you've got it, Antonio! I remember Lisbon, where perfumed ladies rushed backstage to smother us with kisses-which of course I didn't like as an 11-year-old. And Hamburg, where we feared the opera house would collapse from thunderous foot-stomping ovations through 10 encores. And....) Ross Evans, senior member of the touring choir, observes that the organization's extraordinary demands for time, commitment, and excellence become so natural a part of growing up that he and his colleagues tend simply to take it all in stride.

"People ask me what it's like to be in a world-traveling, world-known chorus. It's funny, but I don't really think of it that way," says the 14-year-old soprano. "Maybe that's not good. But working real hard, sometimes you don't appreciate so much," Ross explains. "When I step back and really think about it, I think about the great parts. I think I'll really appreciate it later on in life."

Take it from an alum, Ross: You will.