Singer Spotlight: Kathi Beiter

What is/was your occupation?

I’ve been a private voice and piano teacher in Danville since 1995 and play piano for Sunday services at a local church. Since the pandemic has shut most of that down…no services for much of the year…many kids don’t have good enough internet to have virtual lessons, etc. So, I’ve been using some of the extra time to garden. I’m trying to eliminate some of my lawn and create a mini habitat of native plants in my front yard and along the street. Spending so much time out there actually allowed me to connect, at a distance, with more of my neighbors, which was a positive outcome in the midst of all this. I spent much of the fall doing remote rehearsals with kids for the Young Artists’ Theatre Project of Danville and sound editing their lines together into classic radio plays.

Gosh…pandemic?…what pandemic? Sounds like you’ve maintained a good attitude and healthy approach to life over the past year and kept just as busy without missing a beat. I’d like to think that we’ll all be better, stronger, more creative people when this is all behind us. And being an avid gardener myself, I can certainly appreciate the time spent outside communing with nature. That definitely has been therapeutic for me and served as an escape during these challenging times.

So, how many years have you been singing with the SVC?

I started singing with the Chorale around 1998, I think. I attended Bucknell and was in Chapel Choir with Bill as the conductor. When I found out he was the conductor of the Chorale, I wanted to be a part of it and work with him again.

Indeed…who wouldn’t want to join?  As I’m sure we can both agree, it’s such a joy to sing for Bill and make wonderful music together that we get to share with our audiences.

What was your favorite concert or chorale season to date, and why?

I think my favorite concert was the Voices of Light concert. It combined everything I love. In addition to music, I double majored in English at Bucknell and enjoy literary and historical analysis; you’d think I couldn’t get any geekier than that. But wait…I’m also a theater nerd, one of those geeky kids you knew in high school who hung around the stage in all our free time. I’ve carried that forward, performing in local community theatre, directing my children’s school drama club, the competition plays for the high school speech team, and the Young Artists’ Theatre Project of Danville…so I guess I really like theatre. Scoring the movie for Voices of Light was like mashing everything together. The music was fabulous, haunting, and both modern and ancient sounding. The texts were fascinating combinations of works and I loved analyzing what they said about each other and the film and the music. And the setting was so unusual…in the dark behind the audience, not on display to be seen, just to bathe everyone else in sound…it was so cool. My family told me they kept forgetting that there were live people making the music and several times during the movie, suddenly startled to that realization. Unfortunately, I missed the after-movie talks about the music. That year the concert fell on final dress rehearsal weekend for the drama club and I absolutely had to get back to Danville where I knew 20 middle schoolers were going to be waiting and leaving 20 middle schoolers alone for any length of time is unwise. But I didn’t want to interrupt the talk, so if any of you happen to remember a crazy woman sliding quietly from her seat and crawling out hands and knees, and wondered what the heck was wrong with her, now you know.

Hahaha!!! Yes, now that you mention it, I think I do vaguely remember such an exit being made…nice one, Kathi. And yes, people still talk about that concert. It was incredibly powerful on so many levels and was one of those achievements that really set us apart from other choral groups.

Do you have any other fond recollections from your experience singing with the chorale? 

I’ve loved so many of the concerts, but one of the most memorable moments had nothing to do with the music. It was a POPS concert. I was sitting in the back row, watching whoever was singing their solo piece and I apologize, but I have no memory of the song or who did it or how great it was. As I sat there looking out into lights to see the performer, a motion at the top periphery of my sight caught my eye. There, kind of sparkling in the spotlights, was a spider slowly descending from the ceiling. I have an absolute horror of spiders, so watching this thing coming down, I was hoping it would get spooked and crawl back up, but I was certain it wouldn’t and it would just land on some unsuspecting person and I couldn’t make a noise or let anyone know. I couldn’t stop watching. And then I heard a gasp next to me and on the other side someone else heard it and breathed… “What?” …and then another gasp, and I realized several of us were now watching this thing descend in horror. It got lower and lower, suddenly, the angle of the light no longer showed it and we didn’t know where it was. I remember feeling all of us sitting back harder in our chairs when it vanished. Now what do we do?  I never saw it land. I don’t know if it hit the floor or landed on some normal person who just brushed it away, but nobody jumped up screaming. And I swear, I check the ceiling every time I go to sit on the stage.

Oh my…that could have been disastrous!  I don’t mind spiders, but snakes and bats on the other hand…nope. Thanks for holding it together for the sake of the performer.

Now, before I need to go relieve myself from all this laughter today…any final remarks? 

I’m so looking forward to everyone being vaccinated so we can reconnect and sing in person again. But I can do without any more spiders.

Well said. Thanks for entertaining us, and keeping the soprano 2 section lively as ever.