D E PA R T M E N T S
|
SCENE
The Spirit Song Choir brings joy to Woodbury through community events.
Singing with Spirit
BY MADELINE KOPIECKI
MARY REIMANN has spent over 30 years of her professional career as a music director. When she stepped away from that role in August of 2019, an intriguing pattern began to form. “I had a number of people approach me—what was interesting was it was five separate people—and they all approached me with the same idea to start a community choir that is ecumenical and drawing people from a variety of faith traditions,” Reimann says. “With the first few I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a really interesting idea for the future.’ But by the fifth one I thought, ‘Okay,’ and started really paying attention to this idea,” Reimann says. She reached out to two friends, plus
someone who had pitched the idea. The four drew up a list of people they thought would be interested and began calling folks up. “That was a Thursday, so by Monday we had over 60 people saying yes, they wanted to do it,” she says. While exciting, this also far outstripped Reimann and the other’s expectations, she explains, “I thought, ‘Oh gosh, we’ve got something rolling, what do we do?’” This began another serendipitous pattern of the choirs’ needs being met internally, through the broad ranging skillsets of its members. One of the founding four reached out to a connection she had at Woodbury’s
PHOTO BY JULIE REIMANN
Spirit Song Choir focuses on the community.
16 | SEPTEMBER 2020
0920WOD.indb 16
8/4/2020 1:57:23 PM