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Opinion

Dallas Women's Chorus is a model of creating harmony in diversity

While "women" is their common denominator, just about everything else about the chorus is a model of diversity.

For several years I've been attending, following and supporting a group that is a model for how to overcome all of the partisan nonsense we face every day. Instead of debating or hating, they do it by creating. They sing. And they do it with an excellence that has earned an invitation to perform at Carnegie Hall in May.

Ladies and gentlemen of North Texas, it is my distinct privilege and pleasure to present the Women's Chorus of Dallas.

While "women" is their common denominator, just about everything else about the chorus is a model of diversity. They are rocket scientists, grandmothers, chief executives, doctors, nurses, accountants, black, white, Asian, Latina, Native American, old, young, rich, very rich and poor. Married, single, divorced a few times over. They are of many, many different religions, and lack thereof, which mirrors a political diversity that includes libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, progressives, LGBT, straight and everything in between.

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They sing complex choral pieces in many languages — English, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Ladino, Latin, Finnish, Ancient Greek along with other works that contain abstract vocalizations that simulate wind, tundra and other natural phenomena. Rehearsals are demanding and rigorous, at least once a week on a long Monday night with additional rehearsals as performance events near. And since most everyone likes "entertainment," theatricality often intensifies their presentations, like a piece they performed in a completely darkened concert hall.

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I am also calling attention to this group because they demonstrate something the former architectural critic of The Dallas Morning News, the late, great David Dillon, would always bring to the attention of city art patrons. It's one thing for a city to "buy and import" culture with works and buildings by world famous artists and architects. But it is also the responsibility of a city to grow its own distinct culture. Dallas will never be taken seriously, as a cultural producer, until we grow it here.

We typically think of Austin as the musical city of Texas, but Dallas has its own rich musical history: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Oak Cliff's Stevie Ray Vaughan and the recently deceased jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, etc., but Dallas' music scene is not just in the past. It's here, now, and the Women's Chorus of Dallas is a great example and starting point to appreciate and build on.

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The women sing works by great composers, even popular pieces that are familiar, but their music can also pleasantly catch you off guard. The first concert I attended featured a performance of the Five Hebrew Love Songs by Eric Whitacre, and I quite literally stopped breathing, so transfixed by the chorus I wanted nothing to get between me and the music, even taking in oxygen. As no amateur to live music, I've experienced this only twice before: once, after traveling 1,500 miles to see pianist Keith Jarrett perform in New York, and recently, in my own neighborhood, during a concert at the Kessler Theater by guitarist Al Di Meola that I swear made time stop.

I freely admit that what makes the chorus so remarkable to me is my hypothesis that members sing only because they love it and want to spread the love.

No choral member is paid in this group, other than the very talented director and assistant director. To facilitate their own music, the women organize their own fundraisers. To support the musical community, they support musical scholarships for high school girls, and they invite choruses from Dallas ISD schools and other women's and girls' choruses around the region to join them on stage.

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Hearing them sing is like taking a shower in joy.

As a writer, I have to disclose a bias. I have a new answer to an old question, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Marry a chorus member, as I did more than 30 years ago. I confess, and this is just between you and me, that I attended the first concert because she asked me to. All the other ones have been my idea.

Kevin Sloan is an architecture professor at UTA, founder of Kevin Sloan Studio in Dallas and a Dallas Morning News Community Voices alumnus.

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