 Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm producer-director Scott Knudson. In this episode, Kenneth Wold and others celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Bemidji Area Church Musicians' Summer Recital Series. The Summer Recital Series is a series of programs that are going to various churches in Bemidji on every Wednesday noon throughout the whole summer, starting the first Wednesday of June and ending the last Wednesday of August. So, it brings the community into different churches and it showcases the type of music that they do at any particular church. One thing that I really enjoy about it is the visual part of it, going into another sanctuary and performing, because to me, the visual and the musical are very, very closely linked. And so, to go into another church and hear music with their stained glass windows and just in a different venue is very gratifying to me. I think it's pretty unique that we have it. For me, personally, it's fun just to see different houses of worship. Church sanctuaries often have a beautiful acoustic, so it's really fun to be able to hear the sound. It's often really live. It's also a gift for me to get to see different individuals share their gifts. It has primarily instrumental performers, people who are in the most part members of that congregation or involved in the music in that particular congregation, or others that are invited in to be a part of the particular program. I'm Kenneth Wold. I'm the chairman of the Bemidji Area Church Musicians, the group that sponsors the Summer Recital Series that has gone on for 30 years in various churches in Bemidji. The Summer Recital Series provides for each church an opportunity to let their musicians be displayed in a public way beyond more than just their congregation. I'm Carol L. Johnson, and I'm involved in the Church Musicians Recital Series. I am the treasurer of the Church Musicians, and then performing with Wayne Hoff as piano and organ duets, and then accompanying the hymns and accompanying my daughter. So, back in 1987, a group of fellow church musicians that had been friends for many years decided that it was time to kind of showcase the organists at various congregations. One of the organists said, when I play the organ, people are walking into church or out of the church or taking up the offering. I want them to just sit down and listen. And so it was decided that we should maybe just highlight the organists. And so back in 1987, we decided to start a Summer Recital Series, and we began with four different churches. And then at that time, back in 1987, people were told to bring a bag lunch because it was really geared towards people that were maybe working people and had an hour for lunch, and they could come in, enjoy some music, have their lunch, and get back to work on time. As this evolved, we started saying, well, maybe the churches would like to provide a luncheon. And it seemed like that worked out to be a really good idea. It was not only convenient for the people who came to hear the music, but it was also a fundraiser for individual groups in the churches. Sometimes the youth group did it, sometimes the men's group, sometimes the ladies' group, so a variety of people. And as the series grew, we started adding more Wednesdays and more Wednesdays. And that's how it evolved. I was one of the founders, I guess you could say. I'm Wayne Hoff, and I was in on the ground floor of this Recital Series. I think we started in 1987. I put on a recital here at Ordole Church the first year we had the recital, and it is pronounced Ordole. It's not Ardole, as you may have heard in the community. I was asked by some of the members of the group. I think there was a person in the church that was friends with one of the original members of the group, and they asked me if I was interested in being a part of it. And I said, sure, I'll give it a try. And we got through the recital, people seemed to enjoy it. And I guess I was pretty much part of every recital ever since, at least most of them. It puts you in touch with the community. I mean, there's a lot of community members that come to it, and it kind of keeps your performance alive. But it's nice to have something where you can actually do your own programming. Most of the other things that I play for are programmed by the music teachers, or the directors, or whatever. So it's nice to have something that you have control over what's on the program. Music in the church is a way of bringing praise to God. It draws people together, it draws people in the congregation together. It celebrates the things that God has given to all of us, and our churches individually have their congregation celebrate. Now people come in from different congregations to also be a part of that particular display of talents that celebrate what a particular church has had to offer. People really enjoy this one day a week opportunity to get out with others, perhaps not from their own church, to be a part of the concert and the fellowship time that takes place afterward. The organist is kind of still the staple in many churches, but music evolves, and people started adding more contemporary groups, and other instruments became more prevalent. And so we still had our organists as maybe still the foundation, but then we started adding other instrumental groups. We stayed away from vocal because we felt that choirs in every church were heard and seen, and they had a special part in the service, so we kept it as instrumental. And I think by doing that, it gave other people an opportunity to share their music. So now we have string groups, we have brass groups, we have hand bells, we have flute quartet, we have a French horn quartet. So it has really evolved that way, and it's showcasing other instrumentalists in the church. And I think it's maybe getting more people involved because they're seeing, you know, gee, I could bring my violin to church one Sunday in play, or my flute or whatever. You don't have to just be a singer or at the keyboard. We started with just the four, and it was just kind of a nucleus of those of us who knew each other. And then we said, well, this is going well. Maybe we should see if the organists from this church would like to participate next summer. And we usually got a yes, and it just kind of kept growing from there. And then as others would say, well, you know, we have this string group. Maybe they could play, oh, we would welcome that. So all of a sudden we have week seven. Now we have week eight, and it just kept, it was kind of snowballed from there because there were so many churches in our Bemidji area, and they did have other instruments than just the organ. So that's how it grew. It offers a variety of music that is presented to the community by the community. So everyone who's performing are local people, they're your neighbor, they're your relative, a friend, whatever. And they just provide that 30 minutes every week, something totally different, religious music that people can enjoy, and then the lunch that follows. So it's a fellowship and it's an appreciation of church music. And I think the longevity is there because people are just, they support it, they enjoy it, they look forward to it every summer. I'm already getting people saying, do you have the 2018 schedule ready to go? And if so, I need a copy because I schedule my weeks, you know, because I want to get to as many as I can. Well, they get a good lunch. They have a salad luncheon. The recitals are sort of laid back. They're not real strict as far as, you know, what you can or can't perform. So it tends to be kind of an easy listening sort of experience for the audience. They're able to just come and just enjoy something that might be kind of different that they might not hear at other venues in the town. They can get an idea about what other churches and other musicians are doing and maybe incorporate some of that into their own services. I do worry about the future of it because there are getting to be fewer organists and even fewer pianists, you know, because of, there's many factors contributing to that. But in any case, I really hope that this does have a future. My name is Andrew Ranovic. I'm a pastor at Calvary Lutheran Church. And I've been involved with music for a long time. I grew up playing the violin and I wasn't sure when I moved to Bemidji if I'd be able to plug in musically. And I've been able to do it a lot more than I expected. I started with the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra soon after I came here. I think it was winter of 2010. I'm not sure what summer was my first summer in the recital series, but it's been at least six years. And I've mostly played in a trio that's been supplemented by different musicians. John Romer and Sarah Carlson have been the mainstays. And this last summer, our performance was at First Lutheran. I've played with John and Sarah a lot. So there's a good comfort level. Lutherans love music and Bemidji more broadly certainly does. And we knew last summer with First Lutheran going through the renovation that we couldn't be in the sanctuary so that we would be in this smaller but still really good space. But it is exciting to have a full house. And I think John and Sarah are pretty well known in the music community. So people are curious to come out and see us. In general, our ensemble, The Turtle Island Ensemble, has tried to do global music. We really understand music to be a sort of bridge builder, a source of peace and understanding and communication and positive relationships. So for that particular concert, we got to collaborate with a couple of different people. Two, a Mike Tangin on guitar and Sarah Carlson's daughter Claire played Native American flute. And then we had a young woman who sang Panas Angelicus. So we had a wide variety of music and different tonalities and probably a combination of instruments that isn't often together. The initial work is usually done by John. John has a deep history in directing choral ensembles. So he's kind of our planner. He's the first contact person, but he gives me a call probably in April or May. He throws out some music ideas. He says, how does this sound? He's really good about being the hand delivery person and he drops off a packet of music. All of us do some individual work with the music on our own parts so that when we come together, we can put the music together with just a couple of rehearsals. At minimum, we try to meet together twice unless we're doing music that we've done several times together. I think broadly speaking it strengthens and also portrays the already strong arts fabric that we have here. Obviously historically, theologically, sort of culturally different churches have represented really different traditions and sometimes that has been conflicted. Music is such a good bridge builder in this case. It blurs the line in good ways between the secular and the spiritual. So it brings us together. It gets us after each concert sharing a wonderful lunch together and it just sets a sort of inclusive and participatory tone. Like it's not just one soloist in Bemidji who can have the stage but that there are lots of gifted people. Well, there has been turnover of members in our group in the early days, Pat Kendall, Shannon Jones, Larry and Mary Jane Schroeth and Kenneth came on fairly early on. He oversaw the choral music program at Oak Hills Bible College for over 50 years. Very gifted musician and such a nice man and he is like our president right now and has served in that capacity for many years. He also has deep ties at the evangelical free church and the fine people and culture of music there and it's fun to see the people who show up all the time for different events and have sort of undiminished enthusiasm and Kenneth is one of those people who makes an effort to get to know the performers and I assume does a great deal of work behind the scenes to organize because there is administrative work to be done. Great organizer, great people person has such a connection in the community and such a strong supporter of this organization and of musicians and we want to see if we can't get more and more young people to go into music and certainly to go into church music and stay involved in your home congregations or in any congregation or on campus when you get to college. Well I think there were a number of highlights in our summer recital series in 2017. We had very good attendance. Excellent attendance for the summer. Average of over 150 people. The concert at Ordal Lutheran is always one that people look forward to. They pack the place. How many would seat maybe 75 people and there were 150 there that day? Ordal is just very special of course and I'm not a member there but it's a very special church has a lot of heritage in our community. Ordal Lutheran has their special musician, Wayne Hoff, who people in the community know pretty well and Wayne always does some rather significant things and has a lot of fun when he gets at the piano and invents for his own style. Carol Johnson of course is with him on that concert as well as her daughter Jennifer who's saying a couple of things. And then of course to get to share music and make music with Wayne Hoff who's been a dear, dear friend and he goes way back to the 30 years ago as well. So he and I have that connection very good friends and of course share our love of music. I love it. I absolutely love performing with other musicians. Most of the time it's just me playing for services so I love having people to collaborate with. I had two songs in the program chosen for the congregation to sing or the audience to sing along and Wayne at the piano gave it all kinds of drinks and excitement. And we did some hymn arrangements. Praise to the Lord the Almighty was one of them. That's always been one of my favorites. And we played off from some hymn arrangements but we both added some of our own features to it like extra notes and we also did some secular music. The Blue Danube Walls and of course that's kind of near and dear to me because I used to be involved in what was called the Neri Community Band which my grandfather Van or Tang born directed and the Blue Danube Walls was one of our main pieces that we would perform with that. So it was kind of fun to do something like that also. And it's been really a blessing to me to be able to get to perform with my daughter who also is a church musician and music teacher so she was brought up with music in our home of course. We had a very large crowd here. I don't think we could have fit another person in the building but I have been doing this for almost 30 years now so I was kind of used to that but every year it's gratifying because there's always a new face that maybe wasn't there before. People seem to say to me that they really enjoy this and that some friend invited them and they were so glad that they found out about the recitals and other times people come from out of town the state of Iowa, the state of Wisconsin farther away and are here for the summer and they take a look at the information, find out what are the recitals that particular time and come to the recitals and they tell me oh we always look for the schedule to find out when the recitals are. If people want to attend the summer recitals series there are several ways to get the information. All of the churches in town are asked to publish a schedule in their bulletins so it's available and sometimes online at the churches and the Bemidji Pioneer displays the information. We also put it on the radio, the television and it's available on the Chamber of Commerce website. We've got it out in a lot of places. The church musicians have received an offering at the door every recital throughout the whole 30 years. We decided early on that there would not be an admission fee for these recitals and so what we do is we just simply take a free will offering and then that free will offering goes to the Bemidji area church musicians. And as that fund had grown we talked about ways we could make use of it in helping people in the area. We used some of that money for a choral workshop for several years but as time went along people said you know there are high school students who are going on in music who have been involved in church music in their churches. We'd like to offer a scholarship to those people. And we have done that for all these years and we start the process in February and we have an application process and it is available to high school seniors that will be graduating in the spring and our main criteria that they be either a music major or a music minor and then we base the funding on their criteria. Our group has a meeting once a year to choose the scholarship winners. They have to submit an audition tape and resume and all of that and there's some really good talent out there. And we've been very fortunate through the years we've had so many qualified students that have received the scholarships. And we have subsequently given as many as five scholarships to commencement students going off to college. And then they receive it one year and then the following summer they are part of the recital series. So then the people that come and are supporting the scholarships can see the talent of these young people that they have financially supported. That's one of the benefits that the recital series has offered to the community is to provide for these students encouragement to go on to college and to be involved in church music actively both while they're still in high school and as they go on off to college to be a part of the church wherever it is they're located. I guess I would like to see perhaps something help the local churches more directly bring these people into their congregations to play church music because as it is right now or as it has been you know we'll give a scholarship and there's no guarantee that that person will continue to live in Bemidji or be part of the Bemidji area churches and so I'd like to see if maybe we could devise some programs to actually help our congregations because there is a problem with churches not having organists and pianists. It's getting to be almost crisis level so I'd like to see us address that issue. I think the model that we have is pretty good but one of the characteristics that I like is how it focuses on young musicians so the scholarship element and so I think that intergenerational relationship that is there where adults and elders can get to see these young student musicians and then encourage them. There's the scholarship element so I hope that we'll continue to invite new voices. I'm glad that I've gotten to perform regularly but I hope that other people who want to join in and share their gifts are able to as well. I think the goal is to just continue incorporating even more musicians, maybe some different instruments that we haven't showcased yet and of course we just want to continue to build our audience and get more and more people coming to hear the music. I think the summer music recital series is a communal decision to celebrate music, to spread it around to make a venue to try to understand other denominations and other church buildings. I think the commitment to church musicians is strong. Obviously we have access to wonderful recorded music but there's something about live music that simply cannot be replaced and I think there's a commitment to accessibility to having a concert in the middle of the day means that it's safe for people to drive. It's also a shorter concert, 30 minutes and it's free will donation so that makes music accessible, not just something that's available to the upper crust or the elite. Well I would like to see more young people involved in it because at some point we're going to have to pass the torch to the next generation and I would hope that our people attending would bring their relatives, their young children, neighbors, whoever to see how fun church music can be to put together. There's probably like a myth out there that church music is stodgy and stuffy and it's really not. There's a lot of fun that can be had putting it together with other instruments collaborations with other people singing, all of that sort of thing so I would hope that we could get more young people involved in it in both the performances and to be audience members so I would encourage our audiences to try to think about that and maybe see if they can interest some of the youngsters in their lives in it. To watch Common Ground Online visit lptv.org and click Local Shows. For episodes or segments of Common Ground call 218-333-3020. Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations, member FDIC. Common Ground is brought to you by the Sincultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.