How can any of us remember all of the triumphs, the challenges, and sublime moments to capture the glory in concert or story?

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear,
525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? How about love? How about love?
Measure in love. Seasons of love.

How do we measure 25 years in the life of a choir?

There have been over 250 women singers in and out of our ensemble. How do we measure the cups of coffee, late nights and long weekends of choral life with 500+ concert appearances? How do we measure the miles we’ve traveled to perform in England and Canada, throughout the country in 11 states, and uncounted cities across the Midwest region? How do we measure the amount of music learned, the guest artist visits? How do we measure the relationships gained, the lovers found, the ceremonies celebrated? How do we measure the strife of lovers lost, of death, divorce, and injury? How do we measure, measure our lives? Since it is an anniversary, and a time to celebrate, let’s measure in love, how about love, our seasons of MUSE love.

This recollection is by me, the founding director, so understandably it is through that particular lens I share my thoughts.

MUSE was conceived in 1983, and her gestation period was quick, though her ancestry is long and rich. The early/mid 1980s was the heady period of women’s music, that powerful movement where grass roots women said, “Thank you, we’ll do it ourselves. We’ll write the music, we’ll perform the music, and the lyrics will tell our stories the way we want them told. We will record and we will teach ourselves to play any instrument we need to express all of who we are.” Thus the title for our 25th anniversary concert, ALL THAT WE ARE, MUSE AT 25.

We’ve traversed all kinds of repertoire. For example, we sing sacred music. To introduce some of our many identities, we are lesbian and feminist women who have not been afraid to have conversations about the role religion and music plays in our lives. Our music has certainly not been without controversy, but it has opened us up to many different experiences and it has enabled us to transgress all kinds of territory in our conservative city.

We are lesbian and we are heterosexual women who have lived through Issue 3, and the plucking of a phrase from our human rights ordinance meant to protect gay and lesbian people from discrimination in housing and jobs. Together we stood, in all of our sexual diversities which we recognize more now than in 1983, when we started.

We are many ethnicities; we are black and we are white. We are many beliefs; we are Christian, Unitarian, Quaker, Buddhist, Jewish, Wiccan, Unchurched, Atheist, and Agnostic. We are wise elders, and we are unbounded, creative youth.

When we began 25 years ago, we had 20 years between youngest and oldest. Now we have over 50 years between our youngest and oldest members.

Looking back at the cultural and social context in the mid 1980s, Ronald Reagan was in the White House (VP candidate Geraldine Farraro had just lost in the fall election, 1984), the US built the military budget to fight the Communist menace, global awareness grew of Apartheid in South Africa, and there was the onset and awakening to the worsening AIDS epidemic (identified as the gay plague).

It is not hard to imagine how our repertoire has changed over the ensuing years. We do sing music that both reflects and responds to our world. The music in our spring concert is bound to inspire, heal, educate, entertain, and also, bring back memories.

At this writing 45 MUSE alumni will return to sing. They will join us to sing “Music in My Mother’s House,” by now, a MUSE classic. They will also join in a Holly Near commission for this concert called “All That There Is,” for violin, piano, and women’s voices.

A glorious piece written for our 25th anniversary is called “She Who Makes Her Meaning Clear,” music by Joan Szymko, with text by Audre Lorde. This work is for unaccompanied choir and the text could not be more appropriate for celebrating how MUSE relates to the world:

When I dare to be powerful,
To use my strength in the service of my vision,
Then it is less and less important whether I am afraid.

Our concert will include “Non Nobis Domine,” a sacred work we love to sing, by Rosephanye Powell. We embrace the feminist and womanist sense of the spiritual and sacred in works like “She Who Makes Her Meaning Clear,” “Testimony,” “Hay Una Mujer,” and “Babethandaza.”

Newly commissioned arrangements include contemporary artists Indie.Arie and Ben Harper, “There’s Hope,” and “With my Own Two Hands,” respectively.

In our upcoming celebratory concert, All That We Are, MUSE at 25, you will have the opportunity to experience a wide range of repertoire, seasoned selections to pull at your heart strings and bring back vivid memories. You can see old friends who will return to sing in the alumnae choir.

Come to see friends, renew contacts, and celebrate MUSE. We are alive and well, and still singing at 25. We are 60 strong and dedicated women. We plan to keep on singing and making change in our own lives and in the lives of our audiences nationwide.

Help us commemorate this auspicious moment in time. Join us to honor our long tradition of making a difference in Cincinnati.

How do you measure, measure 25 years? In songs, in struggle, in hope and in laughter, measure in love—25 seasons of love and singing in the Queen City.

and in particular when I think about our guest performers Linda Tillery and the Central State University Chorus. I don’t mean “awesome” as in cool, great, really nice; I mean AWEsome as in inspiring reverence and wonder, tinged with fear.

As an 8-year veteran of MUSE, I have had several opportunities to perform with Linda Tillery. Singer, percussionist, choir-director, story-teller, teacher, comedienne--she takes charge of the stage and the audience. And sometimes she takes charge of MUSE. It’s not unusual for her to turn to the choir in the middle of a number she’s singing, as she did during our Saturday night performance, lift her eyebrow, wave her hand and get us singing back-up on a song we’re just hearing for the first time. That can be a little scary, but with Linda out in front, we know everything will work out.

I have also had an opportunity to hear the Central State University Chorus before, so I was prepared for their absolutely stunning sound. Having never actually shared the stage with them before, I wasn’t prepared for their equally stunning physical presence. At our first joint rehearsal on the Thursday evening before the performances, the CSU chorus was already on the stage when MUSE arrived. We were asked to step up onto the risers with them to run through the numbers we would be singing together. It was pretty daunting to stand on stage, look up at that wall of young people, and consider how I would make my way to my favorite spot on the top riser. Somehow I got there, thanks in part to a helping hand from a friendly tenor named Christopher. For the rest of the weekend, whenever we went to join the CSU singers on stage, I just looked for Christopher. He got me to my spot every time.

So, our awesome guest performers truly inspired reverence and wonder in me. The tinges of fear were there, too, but they didn’t last long.

Mary Chaiken
Alto I

Don’t take MUSE’s word for that - -just listen to what the audience said: “Awesome experience”, “Fantastic”, and “Excellent concert – well worth the 2 ½ hour drive!” These are just some of the thoughts audience members shared on their concert experience at the 12th New Spirituals concerts held on April 5th and 6th at the House of Joy in College Hill. The 12th New Spirituals concerts featured MUSE, the Central State University Chorus, Linda Tillery and commissioned composer, Rosephanye Powell.

Audience surveys are filled out at every concert and MUSE takes the feedback seriously. We are dependent on what the audience says for grant applications, programming and for just “taking the temperature” of our audiences. We thought it would be interesting for you to know what people thought about “Hope Come True”.

Based on the surveys received from the audience, the style of music is what drew most audience members to attend (53%). The New Spirituals project has a very clear scope. Celebrating the broad spectrum of Spirituals from the old to the new is how MUSE was able to commission composer Rosephanye Powell to write Hope Come True. Hope Come True is a suite of pieces that recalls the old, but also introduces the “new” spiritual as well.

The collaboration between MUSE and the highly acclaimed Central State University Chorus under the direction of William Caldwell was a winning combination. Says audience members: “I love MUSE, loved the collaboration with Central State”, CSU drummer was exceptional and the vocalists too”, “Central State adds quite a dimension”, “Central State choir was excellent – a special treat”. The Central State Chorus from Wilberforce, OH, enjoyed the collaboration as much as MUSE and we look forward together to future projects.

Linda Tillery made her 12th appearance with MUSE at the New Spirituals concerts. Linda was the driving force behind the original project and a New Spirituals concert without Linda would seem strange and audience members agree saying: “I adore Linda Tillery”, “Ms. Tillery was truly a blessing”, “I enjoyed Ms. Tillery’s tutorial”.

Audience members come for a variety of reasons but there is none as compelling as on the recommendation of a MUSE member (40%) or a friend (29%). MUSE supporters are mighty and many! Retention of MUSE audience members is important to MUSE and we love to know what you want to “hear” from us in the future. Audience surveys suggest that “more of the same is great” and “anything at all” will work well too. We love performing for you – we love collaborations and we look forward to the 13th New Spirituals Project– that will be something old and something new!

We also look forward to seeing you at our 25th Anniversary Concerts on Saturday, June 14 at 3:00 and 8:00 PM at Greaves Concert Hall on the campus of Northern Kentucky University. When you are there – don’t forget to let you your “voice” be heard. Be sure to fill out the audience survey – we want to listen to you!

With gas prices up, food prices beginning to soar, anad the weakening market for affordable housing, MUSE decided to reduce concert ticket prices back to $15.00 with no added cost at the door. We have decreased the bottom of our sliding fee scale, and increased the top price ($8.00 to 50.00). We want to be inclusive and we want to fill the seats, especially during this, our 25th anniversary season. Yes, we are worth the higher price - still lower than many arts organizations in our musically rich city, but this is to say, "Join us, we want you with us, for All That We Are: MUSE at 25!

Each alumnus will be given one ticket to attend each concert. Your friends and family can purchase their tickets through the website. If the updates on the website don’t answer all of your burning questions, please feel free to contact Rachel Gaspar’raj at dennison@cinci.rr.com or 368-9476.

Please check out the links on the website alumnae page to the music we are hoping you will perform with us. You can brush up on “In My Mother’s House” and “On Children”, as well as learn a new commission, “All That There Is.” The written music and audio music are both available for you. We hope that all three songs could be memorized but recognize that learning a new piece on your own may be very challenging. So, we will have copies of “All That There Is” at the concert for you.

The anniversary weekend will begin with one of our yummy potlucks. Will Dorothy make soup? Will Amanda make a dessert? Be our guest and come eat at 6:30pm. On Saturday, our call time is 2pm at Greaves Auditorium at NKU. We hope that you will warm up with us and be dressed in our classic spring wear—white and MUSE blue. The concerts are at 3pm and 8pm. After the first concert, there is a gap for dinner - please brown bag it. That night we will relax and celebrate at Bennyce Hamilton’s house for the after-party.

We are very, very excited! We can’t wait to share this weekend with you!

Look who’s coming! As of 5/7/08, these alumni have signed up to sing and will be here June 13 and 14! They would love to see you and don’t you want to see them? Contact us so that we can add your name.

Soprano I
Susan Benton
Susan Binder-Babey
Maureen Crotty Boylan
Joy Sherry Clower
Jen Conley
Edy Dreith
Jeanne Haladay
Charis Kabat
Suzanne LeVan
Judy McClure
Sue Plummer
Caroline Stevens

Soprano II
Sarah Anthoney
Jane Becker
Winnie Goodridge
Julie Jencks
Charlyn Jackson
Katie Johnson

Alto I
Mona Bronson-Fuqua
Jeri Burns
Amy Elfner
Leslie Evelo
Kathy Gilbert
Chris Gutjahr
Christine Haskins
Barb Hester
Paulette Meier
Judy Popovich
Jennifer Powers
Gilda Turner
Kim Watts

Alto II
Miriam Davidson
Talli Flanigan
Mickey Gilyard
Bonnie Jefferson
Connie Kreiner
Terry Mayo
Rita Organ
Diantha Rau
Chris Reed
Pam Wright
Olaniyi Zainabu

For the next few months I bought cassette tapes instead of groceries. It was the early 1980’s, and I was a community organizer/activist in Eastern Kentucky. I worked with people living in the aftermath of strip mining, then clear cutting. I was there when miners and their families took on coal companies, so “imagine my surprise” when that first tape arrived---the one on which Holly Near sang about mountains and women and dreams.

There were songs about me on that tape and the others I ordered; I swear they came in brown envelopes. At night, after hours of strategy meetings around one issue or another, Meg, Cris, Ferron, Barbara, and of course, Holly, sang me to sleep. I was very careful to always use my headphones so as not to horrify the nuns I lived with. I think it was Holly who helped me understand that I really did not want to enter a Benedictine monastery in northwest Arkansas. I was just in love with Sr. Mary Adams, in my mid-thirties, and still baffled by what the truth in loving women meant for my life.

The fall of 1991 brought me to Cincinnati, the spring of 1992 to my first MUSE concert, and I should probably mention, my first real date with my partner of 17 years. I can still hear Cheryl Welch singing “Columbus lied, lied, lied”, the haunting cello in “This Longest Night” (MUSE legend has it this concert was just that), and “Something About the Women” brought me to my feet and tears. That August I auditioned, wanting to be part of this community of women more than I had ever wanted monastery life and so afraid I would not be accepted. I was and have sung thirteen of the fifteen seasons since that Saturday afternoon.

Through MUSE the work I began in Eastern Kentucky continues for me. It’s the work of taking risks, exploring the most difficult of issues, seeing what hasn’t been seen, understanding what I haven’t understood before. It’s what the music does for me, for all of us in the choir, and I believe, for our audiences. As I write this, I’m remembering lines from a poem by Wallace Stevens. It’s a well-known poem and over-analyzed. When read simply for the story it is, “The Idea of Order at Key West” tells of a person walking the beach at Key West, and noticing a woman also walking there and singing, is transformed by her song. The lines I remember are:

Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and singing, made.

I believe MUSE has sung her just and beautiful and wonderful world for twenty-five years. I can’t imagine not singing along.