Strung Out Episode 186: PART ONE. INTERVIEW WITH GARY GEIGER, CREATOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE EVANSTON CHILDREN'S CHOIR

Most musicians dream of growing up and forming their own band.  Or perhaps joining one.  As a young musician, growing up in a predominantly African-American community in Cleveland, Ohio, Gary Geiger was exposed to rock, soul and many other forms of roots music.  Later in life, he turned toward classical music and on a chance, was given direction of a children's choir.  Inspired by that opportunity, Geiger created the Evanston Children's Choir, in Evanston, Illinois.   

It is a choir that is noted for an eclectic style of musical choices: soul, rock, country, jazz, many of the pieces created by regional musicians.  Geiger took a rock n' roll approach to a children's choir and created something very unique.  The critics are starting to take notice as the choir has started to perform with at important venues and with some respected classical (and pop) stars:

The ECC has performed in a wide variety of major venues including the Rosemont Theatre, Evanston’s Alice Millar Chapel, the Harris Theater in Chicago’s Millennium Park and Orchestra Hall. The ECC has grown from a mere three (3) singers at its inception to a multi-tiered program that continues to expand.  ECC ensembles are regularly sought after for collaborations and have shared the stage with the likes of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Evanston Symphony, Barry Manilow, S.O.U.L. Creations, the Chicago Philharmonic, the Ondas Ensemble and the North Shore Choral Society. All the while, since its founding in 2002, the ECC has remained committed to its roots, serenading Evanstonians young and old in free outreach performances at schools and community centers.

The Evanston Choir website.

Transcript

SO 186 GARY GEIGER : part one

[00:00:00] KEITH RIKER: Welcome to Strung Out, the podcast that looks at life through the lens of an artist. Your host is the artist, writer, and musician, Martin Laurence McCormack. Now here's Marty. 

[00:00:13] MARTIN McCORMACK: Hey, great to have you with us. And I have with me today a man that's been working for years developing a wonderful choir. It's the Evanston Children's Choir, full disclosure. 

[00:00:26] My daughter Aine is part of that choir and about a little less than a year ago I was brought on to the board. So I definitely have a dog in this fight. And that being said, I think it's very important for our listeners to hear what this gentleman has to say. His name is Gary Geiger and I want to welcome you to Strung Out.

[00:00:50] GARY GEIGER: Thanks very much, Marty. It's exciting to be here talking to my buddy. 

[00:00:54] Yeah I want the listeners to hear, in your own words, just how you got this all going. How long has the Evanston Children's Choir been going?

[00:01:06] MARTIN McCORMACK: Let's start there because I have a lot of questions for you. Go ahead. 

[00:01:09] GARY GEIGER: Sure. Wow. That's For those who know their Evanston area history, there's a a differentiation I need to make.

[00:01:17] There was a group for a long time called the Evanston Children's Chorus, based at the Music Institute of Chicago, which is actually centered in Evanston. Their main branch is in Evanston. That was run by Mary Brown for decades. And they, at some point, Mary Brown retired. And That was around when I started the Evanston Children's Choir.

[00:01:41] But some people think, oh, I was in that choir when I was, someone will tell me, 50 years ago. I say, no, it was a different thing. So we started in 2002. And the way we started is, I went to school as a piano major. I was a piano performance major at Northwestern. Graduated in 1991. I got a master's degree in piano at DePaul.

[00:02:04] And graduated in 96. I took a few extra years because I didn't go straight to grad school. I wanted to make sure I really wanted to do this, because being a musician is hard, as we all know. Can I make a living at this? Do I like making a living at this? So anyways, after 96, around that, no, right around 96, I started accompanying for the Chicago Children's Choir.

[00:02:26] They have changed their name since, but they were then Chicago Children's Choir. One of the piano professors that knew me said, hey, they have an opening and they're looking for a sub. So I went and subbed for them, and I had never thought about choir choral music, but I knew that accompanying would be part of the mix of my career, because as a pianist, everyone needs a pianist, either as a teacher or an accompanist.

[00:02:51] And I knew I wasn't going to be the star soloist, right? And I know what I want to be, and that kind of pressure, and I thought, what would I do? So I thought my career would be a combination of accompanying and maybe getting a chamber music group together and some teaching, right? I subbed for Chicago Children's Choir almost immediately.

[00:03:10] They had me in rotation as a regular pianist with their concert choir and all of their, they have so many branches of that group and I fell in love with the music. I just, the choral music and the kids. I fell in love with just the wonderful young people. And that Chicago Children's Choir has such a great mix of all different kinds of kids from all over and seeing them all get along and work together and create something beautiful.

[00:03:32] Sounds cheesy, but that just. Hit home with me and I just loved it and gradually over the years, between 1996 and 2000, early 2000s, they started asking me, Oh, the director couldn't be there. Can you help with rehearsal? Can you help direct? Can you help me? I said, okay. And they would ask me to help run a sectional.

[00:03:54] And I had also been doing work at accompanying voice studio. So I started learning a lot about voice from just from being in voice studios and hearing the teachers talk. And teach their students and I found myself knowing what to say and I was already teaching piano lessons at the time, private lessons, but I had never worked with groups, but I found that, oh, wow, the kids are listening to me and I, this, and I know what to say.

[00:04:19] And this is another, I was starting to branch out and that grew into, can you not just run as, and it's sectional by the way, is like when you take. One director has the sopranos in one room and another has the altos in the other room and you break out the sections and you come back together. At some point, I started running a few entire rehearsals.

[00:04:39] And then, at some point, they started asking me to run a gig, to play, can you direct, take the kids to this gig, and just you from the piano direct, because the director can't be there, and we had one of the gigs, I remember the actual gig, where I got lit on fire and thought, I want to do this as a director.

[00:04:59] Pritzker School had a graduation ceremony in Chicago, and at the time, the director was still a dear friend of mine, Danny Wallenberg. He had to be out of the country or away. He said, Gary, can you direct a couple of songs from the piano? And for these kids, I said, okay, I'll do it for you. And I walked in, and I was being thrown to the wolves.

[00:05:21] This is a group of high school kids who were I had one rehearsal with them and one performance. So we're walking into the rehearsal, they're all free and loose and they don't know me from Adam and I thought they could just eat me alive or just ignore me, or it could be a rowdy crowd and they were rowdy, but I, they listened to me and I thought, wow.

[00:05:45] And I actually clicked with them. And then we did the performance at the graduation ceremony. We did two songs and two just. An incredible response from the crowd and I walked out of there just thinking, I just was lit on fire. I thought, if I can pull that, I thought, I want to do this. I just loved the interaction and just the thrill of being able to pull something off like that and also to help my friend and having it all work and I thought, I want to not only, that's when I really started veering away from solely playing the piano to wanting to direct a children's corner.

[00:06:21] MARTIN McCORMACK: So what, what gave you though, I can see how you were influenced and you're sparked to do it. But the idea of taking over a choir as opposed to starting one from the ground up, how did that come about? Because that's 

[00:06:38] clearly formidable. 

[00:06:39] GARY GEIGER: Yeah. Almost on a whim. I knew I wanted to do to be a director, but I didn't.

[00:06:46] I hadn't thought through too thoroughly how that would manifest. And I had plenty of work as an accompanist and teacher, so I was in no rush to do it. It wasn't like I started looking at all the jobs that had openings or in schools or in the area. It just happened. A lot of things in life that are I guess meant to be, if you will.

[00:07:07] It just, this one just happened. I have a great friend who studied with my same piano teacher at Northwestern, Rick Ferguson, who started the Musical Offering School in Evanston, which is a wonderful community music school. Like a mom and pop counterpart to the Music Institute of Chicago, if you will. Both are great places, but this is, it was a smaller school.

[00:07:27] He started that in the year 2000 because he wanted to have a, his own community music school. And It's still up and running, by the way. Fabulous place. We actually have a branch choir there now, again. But I was at the musical offering dropping off some of my original piano pedagogical pieces that I had written for teaching piano to Rick.

[00:07:48] And as I'm leaving, I remember, I, again, there's these moments in your life where you remember exactly. I can picture it. I was walking to my car. It was early evening. It was dark. I turned to him, and he was locking up the door. I said, hey. Do you guys have a children's choir? He said, no. And I, and then I stopped and I said, do you want one?

[00:08:07] He said, yeah. And that was it. I, so I said, I had this platform where I could, he basically said, let's build a program here. So no money, no budget, right? It was just me and an idea in my head. But I had this person who was going to host us and we started the musical offering children's choir. That was the.

[00:08:28] first manifestation of what is now the Evanston Children's Choir. And Rick, bless his heart, he let us, he didn't, he said, I'm not taking any money from you, you just build a program, so he let us use the room, and at the first rehearsal we had three kids. We had no marketing, we had nothing, three kids walked in.

[00:08:44] MARTIN McCORMACK: What year was this? 

[00:08:45] GARY GEIGER: This was 2002. So two years after he started his school, so it was just, we were both up and getting things going. I put flyers up. The internet was not as widespread then. And there was just, it was just word of mouth. And three kids walked in the door. I thought, oh man. The next rehearsal, five kids walked.

[00:09:05] Okay. Or no, it was seven. It was seven. And then, after a couple weeks, a couple kids quit. I thought, oh, this is not going anywhere. But we had five that kept coming. And they kept coming and kept coming.

[00:09:20] I wasn't getting paid, the school wasn't getting paid, but I was having a great time with the kids and there was no pressure. I thought, as long as you keep coming, I'll keep coming. So we kept coming, and by by the end of that first, by the holidays that year, it was September in 2002, and by the holidays, we still had the same five kids.

[00:09:38] And I thought, okay, if we don't get 15 kids by January, if it doesn't really grow, then I'm bagging this because it's not going anywhere. It's just not going to happen. I gave it an honest try. So January came and we had the enrollment. People were registering and we didn't get 15, but we got 10! And I said, okay, we doubled, and then it grew from there.

[00:09:58] So we kept going. By the end of that year, we had our first in house concert with 13 kids, and it gradually grew from there. After about five years, we outgrew the space and we needed to incorporate. We needed to move, basically. So we went to the Norris Cultural Arts Center in Evanston and we established ourselves as our own entity.

[00:10:17] A 501c3, we're a non profit. We established the Evanston Children's Choir officially in 2007. And we've been at the Norris Center ever since. And Still Buddies with Musical Offering, I think I mentioned, we have one of our younger groups. We've come full circle, we're back home there. It's called Story Choir, we're doing that at the school again.

[00:10:36] 20 years later or so. That is the story of how this got going. Here we are. We're, when we record this, we're staring into the face of 2024. You're coming up, basically, on 25 years of running the Evanston Children's Choir. You've been at there for a quarter of a century. We can say that now. You had no idea.

[00:11:03] How to put the business end of it together, did you? That's the thing that Oh, I got help. I had lawyers. I had, I got legal help for sure. There are often I think a lot of legal professionals they want to They have a certain amount of pro bono work that they do. They write it off on their taxes.

[00:11:26] But I happen to have piano I knew a lot of professionals in, man, I got a lot of help when I was starting out and had no money. I knew piano clients, piano parents who were doctors, I knew some who were lawyers, and I, one of them was one of the, my piano students had a dad who was a lawyer, and he was instrumental in helping me set up the whole, how do you apply for 501c3 status, how do you, We established a board.

[00:11:53] We had a lot of, I had a lot of great parents who maybe necessarily didn't have expertise as a, legally, but they really, some early parents. The McDaniels, hey, giving you a shout out. The Gonzaleses, going back a long time. These parents really helped me. If they couldn't help me directly, they helped me find where to get the help.

[00:12:12] MARTIN McCORMACK: And it's as, it's a community jumping in and helping you build. But 

[00:12:16] you took the leap, And pretty amazing, I think, that you went from somebody that was accompanying people, concert pianist, and then turning around and trying to put together a children's choir, and succeeding by turning it into a 5013C.

[00:12:37] This is all fairly daunting stuff. It's building something from scratch, which you didn't inherit. Anything from anybody, which is pretty cool, I think. One thing I want to focus on during the course of this interview is the musical choices that you have made for this choir. I don't know when School of Rock came out, but you, I think you predated this in this idea that These kids were not going to be Evanston's version of the Vienna Boys Choir.

[00:13:20] This was not going to be necessarily just doing classical pieces, magicals, what 

[00:13:27] have you.

[00:13:29] GARY GEIGER: I had a great model in circling back again to Chicago Children's Choir. They we are not affiliated with them, just to be to put that out there. But I did model the Evanston Children's Choir. After my experience with Chicago Children's Choir, they have always done tremendously diverse repertoire from classical to folk, to pop, to jazz, to rock, to gospel, to everything in between.

[00:13:54] That is what I love. I love variety. That's the way I teach my piano lessons. I, you want to learn a Bergmuller ballad? I got you. You want to learn a Taylor Swift song? Okay, sure. What. I take I start where people are at. And, but for choir, I love variety. I, as artists, I heard, you know the artist Beck? 

[00:14:17] He was interviewed once, and he, about how eclectic he is, and he says, Most musicians I know don't just have one kind of music in their, Back then, people had CDs, he said, in their CD collection, He said, you go to their house, they've got everything from, Heavy metal to country to, to like Whitney Houston to, he says, most artists are pretty eclectic and that he knew.

[00:14:43] And I feel the same way. I feel like if you like, good music is good music and it can be any genre. So I was all about exploring all these 

[00:14:51] genres. So this isn't Gary Geiger, a classical musician snob thinking. 

[00:15:00] I'm going to entice the kids into a No. I draw them in with a little candy and then hit 'em with Beethoven only.

[00:15:08] MARTIN McCORMACK: No, but you grew up 

[00:15:10] Chicago boy, right? No. 

[00:15:12] Where'd you grow up? 

[00:15:13] GARY GEIGER: I, oh, that's a interesting story. I'm from East Cleveland, Ohio. Oh, okay. Okay. I grew up one of the, I have AC actually. A background that I haven't found many people that have it. I grew up in a neighborhood that is, was mostly African American. It didn't start out that way.

[00:15:35] It was back in the 70s. It was when I see pictures as a baby. Lots of white people there. And then at some point, it was one of those neighborhoods that suffered from a white flight as they call it. When a few African Americans move in and everyone moves out and Shamefully. And my parents would have none of that.

[00:15:53] They said, That's ridiculous, we're staying. And it was one of the best things they ever did for me. Just saying, they became my friends, they were in, that was my community. It was hard, because I won't lie, there were many times where I was picked on because I was the, maybe the geeky white kid, but but I still African Americans were my friends, my babysitters, my Oh, cool thing.

[00:16:20] My, my babysitter, my childhood babysitter is an African American woman who is now on the Supreme Court of the Ohio Supreme Court. She's a Supreme Court Justice. What? How cool is that? Very cool. But anyways, just a little aside. Go Melody Stewart!

[00:16:38] That, that is where I was from. And I listened, I grew up listening to Motown and to Early Prince. And the Isley Brothers And then when I got to high school, I started getting, broadening my horizons into more classic rock, and indie rock, and underground, and so I already had these influences that maybe someone growing up in an all white suburb wouldn't have.

[00:17:06] That is, that's how I started. I was, I guess I had a lot of diverse influences from the very beginning.

[00:17:15] MARTIN McCORMACK: Let's listen to one of the songs, first of all, to hear the diversity of this choir. And why don't you introduce the first song, and I am going to, it's Hotaru Koi. Hotaru Koi. Okay. How, what does that mean in Japanese? 

[00:17:32] GARY GEIGER: So that is, I have another tie in to my diversity, diverse experiences in my life. I have a Japanese wife who immigrated.

[00:17:43] during her college years and I have, so I have two kids who are half Japanese. We are very tied in with Japanese culture. So that's how I got introduced to a lot of cool Japanese songs. This is, although this one I think I had heard, it was published in the States before I met my wife, I believe. But it means, Come Firefly.

[00:18:03] It's about a firefly. And I just love the song. Once I married my wife and had my kids and I think I pulled it off the shelf again and we learned it again a few years ago. But it is, it's all about, it's a kid's folk song in Japan. Beckoning a firefly to come here and come and don't drink that water over there.

[00:18:26] Drink the water over here. It's sweeter. Come to me, come dance with me. It's just a lighthearted song, but really cool. And you hear some great vocal interplay among the different sections as you listen. 

[00:18:36] Let's give it a listen. You're going to hear the Evanston Children's Choir here on Strung 

[00:18:43] ECC: Out.

[00:19:08] My baby is crying don't cry! I'll wrap you in my blanket BABY CRY! You let me touch your bottom You snatch away all of my time The Chicken chicken Monkey monkey terrible burp. Heaven. another more your money. I cannot play this early. Terrible burp.

[00:19:53] Heaven, hell! Oh. Heaven and Hell. Forget.

[00:20:13] KEITH RIKER: This podcast wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the gifts of support we receive from listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, why not send in your gift of love? Go to martinmccormack. com and click on the donate button. 

[00:20:29] MARTIN McCORMACK: And we're back, and I want to pick up where we left off before we heard the music and the break. You're in this neighborhood. It's changed, it's become predominantly African American, and you've got, not too far down the road, Detroit, Motown, all that great music that really defined our generation to some degree.

[00:20:52] What got you into classical music then? You truly were the geeky white boy 

[00:20:57] GARY GEIGER: then. So I, as a kid, I, my mom was a, she was a musician and she sang, she still sings. And she loved, my parents played everything. My dad would play, he would play John, everything from John Denver, mom would play her, Olivia Newton John, dad would play.

[00:21:24] Oh man, I'm drawing a blank on the, who was the Roland on the Rivergate? Not Tina Turner, but he did remakes of it. Tom Jones! Yeah! Oh wow! Fleetwood Mac, he would play all this great stuff on the radio. My mom would play really great classical stuff as well. And she was in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus for many years.

[00:21:45] And Cleveland, of course, I think the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony are the two, two of the best in the world, actually. For such a small town, or a small city, Cleveland has always had one of the best orchestras out there. There's a great classical tradition in the city of Cleveland. My mom just, at one point, I was, I remember being on our old beat up piano, walking, going A, B, C, D, E, F, G, just playing all the keys and naming them.

[00:22:11] And my mom said, Gary, do you want piano lessons? And I said, yes. And I just, and then I was off and running and I guess we found out I had some ability at it. And I always just loved it. And I think I had a lot of emotional struggles as a kid. I that's another whole podcast we can get into, but piano was something that.

[00:22:33] I was good at, and it was mine, and if people were picking on me, making fun of me no matter what I had this, no one could take this away, it was something I could lose myself in, and classical music, it's actually, there's awesome stuff for kids to play, it's not stuffy at all at a kid's level, there is fun I had fun playing it, and I did play, Ed Leroy Brown on the piano, and everyone knows she's Wendy, I played my, I had my best hits of the 60's and 70's songbook, I played that as well, just for fun, but I played my sonatinas and my etudes and but it was a way to lose, it was something I could lose myself in and something that, that was mine, that I had, that I was good at.

[00:23:14] So I was proud of it and it was really, it was just love. I loved the music. I loved all variety. So even as a kid learning, I learned my classical with my teachers and on my own, I also played my own pop stuff. Even back then, I was doing a mix. All right. Very 

[00:23:33] MARTIN McCORMACK: cool. And we're going to take a quick break here because I want to get in some of these songs.

[00:23:39] And I also hear that capers, the studio dog needs to go outside to the bathroom. Let's pick the song radioactive. Can you say a little bit about this? 

[00:23:50] GARY GEIGER: This was before COVID. We did that song. I think this is a 2019 recording. We did it a couple of times. One of the kids mentioned Imagine Dragons, the artists, as they wanted to do an Imagine Dragons song.

[00:24:05] They mentioned a different one, but I found this, there was a great correlation of this and we did it. And it was just one of the most fun things we've ever done. And the kids, the recording is one of my favorites of in all the years we've been doing this. And then when COVID hit the lyrics of this song, they're very apocalyptic.

[00:24:25] And welcome to the new age. Welcome to the new age. And I feel it in my bones. Just what hit us that no one expected. The song seemed all the more relevant. So we actually did it again when there was one of our first concerts live. Again, it was with masks and everything. We brought that song back because it just really hit home and everyone loved it.

[00:24:50] But really, the, little did we know what we were in for when we recorded this, but it seems all the more relevant today and with the world just the way it is beyond pandemics. It's, it really strikes a chord with 

[00:25:04] MARTIN McCORMACK: me. Let's listen to the Evanston Children's Choir under the direction of founder Gary Geiger.

[00:25:13] Sing Radioactive. You're listening to Strung Out.

[00:25:56] ECC: I.

[00:26:08] Breaking in, shaping up, I'm checking out on the prison bus. This isn't the apocalypse. I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones. To make my system blow. Welcome to the now. To the now. Welcome to the now. The two hands Boom All fine Radioactive, Radioactive Boom, All fine Radioactive da, wäh

[00:27:12] ho I am breaking I'm shaking I'm

[00:27:25] breaking up I'm shaking I'm breaking up I'm shaking I feel it in my bones, to make my system glow Welcome to the night, welcome to the night, to the new age oh. Radioactive Oh oh Radioactive

[00:28:00] Systems go deep In

[00:28:26] Welcome to the new age, to the new age. Get it on. Put your hands in the air. Welcome to the new age, to the new age.

[00:28:56] Welcome to the new age, to the new age. Woah.

[00:29:05] Radioactive, radioactive.

[00:29:32] Hello everyone. My 

[00:29:34] GARY GEIGER: name is Polly Chase. I am the gallery director of Marty's Online Art Gallery at martinmccormick. com. If you 

[00:29:42] ECC: haven't done so already, I invite you to go check out his 

[00:29:45] GARY GEIGER: artwork. He works in several different formats. Painting, illustration, drawings, and a very unique way of doing scratch art, which I 

[00:29:56] ECC: think you'll find very interesting.

[00:29:59] So go check it out. 

[00:30:00] GARY GEIGER: MartinMcCormack. com, click on the gallery, look at the art, and when you're ready to start your own collection, 

[00:30:08] ECC: send me 

[00:30:08] GARY GEIGER: an email at martyfineart 

[00:30:11] ECC: at gmail. com. Thanks for listening. 

[00:30:17] MARTIN McCORMACK: We're going to continue with this interview with Gary Geiger on next week's edition of Strung Out. I hope you'll join us then.

[00:30:25] And as always, thank you for listening. Thank you 

[00:30:28] GARY GEIGER: for listening. For more information about this show or a transcript, visit martinmcormack. com. While there, sign up for our newsletter. See you next time on 

[00:30:39] ECC: Strung Out.

[00:30:46] ​