The StarPhoenix: Greystone alumni sing songs of praise

By Bob Florence, The StarPhoenix, March 2, 2009

Greystone Singers' current director Gerald Langner (right) and former director Robert Solem at a practice for the group at the University of Saskatchewan
Photograph by: Greg Pender, The StarPhoenix, The StarPhoenix

Lorraine Reinhardt sends her regrets. She'd like to be in Saskatoon for the 50th anniversary reunion of the University of Saskatchewan's Greystone Singers on March 21, but she is performing on the same weekend with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, the company she has been with for more than 20 years since she turned pro.

She'll be here in spirit, though.

When the Greystone Singers get together on that Saturday -- it's shaping up to be a big deal, too, with singers from the original cast through to the present edition -- and the laughter flows and the good times roll, Reinhardt has a story they can add to the Greystone lore.

She remembers the Greystone Singers doing a workshop at Lutheran Collegiate Bible Institute, her high school in Outlook, and how charmed she was. She wanted to join the choir and sing the way they did. She could hardly wait. She auditioned in 1974, her first year in university, and after making the cut, she attended weekly rehearsals led by Robert Solem, Greystone's seasoned conductor.

"When I first started he was fairly strict," Reinhardt says on the phone from Vancouver. "I remember being on tour in Saskatchewan and one of the other girls in the choir saying she'd pay me $50 if I smooshed something in his face.

"I never took her up on it."

Reinhardt has other stories of her Greystone years -- of spring concerts at Knox United Church, of weekend car washes with the choir to pay for their summer tour to Europe. They played England and Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Those were the days, she says. What a group. Such a sound.

"I learned an awful lot from Bob Solem in terms of repertoire, in terms of phrasing, in terms of blending," says Reinhardt, a soprano with the Greystone Singers for four years.

Because she can't make it back for the reunion later this month she'd like to add something else now, for the record.

"That was one of the most enjoyable times of my life," she says.

There have been more than 1,500 students in the Greystone choir in the course of 50 years. For every singer a story.

There's Harold Orr, an engineering student who entered a contest to design the Greystone Singers' crest after the choir was formed in 1959. Orr was awarded first prize. He won $10.

"Being a student and a father of three kids at the time, every penny counted," he says.

There's Raymond Orr, who succeeded his brother Harold as president of the Greystone Singers in 1960 and who helped arrange the choir's first tour.

"We went to Watrous, did a TV spot in Yorkton and then finished with a concert in Canora," says Harold, whose favourite trip was to Edmonton where they performed in concert with the University of Alberta choir.

"I believe it was the spring of '62," Harold says. "On the train ride home everybody sang until we were hoarse."

On the 50th reunion weekend someone is bound to tell the story of the time the Greystone Singers were snowed in during a tour of southern Saskatchewan and had to spend the night in Maple Creek after a concert there. The owner of the local movie theatre invited them to a private screening and so 50-some members of the choir snuggled in to watch an old war movie and ate as much popcorn as they wanted, free buckets for all.

The Greystone Singers have a boatload of road stories. There was Expo 86 in Vancouver where billionaire Jim Pattison joined them on stage, playing an unscripted trumpet riff, and Ottawa in 1990 where they sang for the installation of governor general Ray Hnatyshyn. There was the Vatican in 1996, singing during mass at St. Peter's Basilica. After they performed in Munich in 1977, a German critic wrote: "An extraordinary artistic experience." They won't forget that.

Or how about the trip to California one year and the outdoor concert they had at Disneyland? "At one point as I was conducting I saw everyone in the choir had an amused look on their face," says Solem, who led the Greystone Singers for 33 years and is one of four former conductors returning for the reunion. "Goofy had snuck up behind me and was conducting, too. One of the sopranos came up to me afterward and said 'I didn't know which goof I was supposed to follow.' "

What a hoot this choir.

And what commitment. What quality. It's Greystone tradition.

"The students are not only spirited, but talented," says Solem. "They give so much back. As the conductor you kind of just float on top of the wave."

Gerald Langner sang with the Greystone choir for six years, singing with Reinhardt and under Solem. Langner is now in his 10th season as conductor.

"I remember my first rehearsal in the Thorvaldson Building," says Langner, his office on campus now just down the road at the Education Building. "I was overcome with emotion, this beautiful sound all around me. I was so choked up I just stood there."

Langner's 2008-09 edition of the Greystone Singers has been in rehearsals since fall, learning a program that is part traditional, part contemporary and totally challenging. They have just come off a tour of southern Saskatchewan. They curled in Weyburn. They went water sliding in Yorkton. And my, how they sang.

"When you're at the top of your game, you feel it," Langner says. "It's exhilarating. The music sits in your mind for days afterward.

"I came out of there just wired."

On to the reunion then.

The current Greystone Singers are performing that weekend at Knox United Church and so too the alumni. They're going to sing together, 50 years of Greystone Singers blending into one.

Says Langner: "I want to be conducted by Bob again."

bflorence@sp.canwest.com
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