RALSTON
CHORAL ICON TO RETIRE AFTER 27 YEARS
How a cheap gig turned into director's life and love.
By Sara Bennett Kansan staff writer
Members of the University of Kansas Chamber Choir ring the cavernous Murphy Hall rehearsal room, attempting to blend their voices in perfect harmony. In the middle of the circle, James Ralston, director of KU's choral department, sways with the music.
Ralston is in perpetual motion. His arms outline a circular path, illustrating the flow of the music. He runs back and forth between sections, and then descends upon the piano to pound out lost notes. As the piece draws to a close, he closes his eyes and cups his hands, drawing them into his heart as if to capture the last, precious note.
the sound needs to be more personal and generated from within," he says when the singers have fallen at ease. "We're not quite there yet."
Ralston has spent his entire career getting there, trying to achieve that moment of perfection when singers and director become one and the composer's true intent is realized. Now, after 27 years with KU'S choral department, Ralston will return at the end of the year.
Throughout his career, Ralston has worked with a number of illustrious music figures, including Lucas Foss and Aaron Copland. Sitting in hischtered yet sparsely decorated office, he recalled when modern composer Norman Dello Joio visited a rehearsal of one of his own works.
"He sat down at the piano and, all of a sudden, it all just made sense." "Ralston said."
But Ralston's true mentors were such well known KU figures as D.M. Swarthout, the first true dean of the music school, and Clayton Krehbiel, who musician Robert Shaw described as one of the most talented choral directors ever.
Ralston said his love affair with KU began when Swarthout and his a capella choir performed at the Kansas City junior college he was attending. Influenced by Swarthout's choral conducting, Ralton transferred in 1950 to KU, where he earned three degrees in music education.
Ralston threw himself into KU life with such enthusiasm that he often didn't have time to practice. "Plus I didn't think it was necessary to practice," he said. "My voice teacher threw me out of her studio a few times because I wasn't prepared."
the Navy. He was stationed in the Far East during the Korean War but still found a way to keep up with his music. Because his unit could not receive armed services radio, Radalton put together a quartet of sailors to sing over the ship's radio and perform in bars on the mainland.
Ralston graduated from KU in 1952 and joined
When he retired from the university back to KU and earned a master's degree in 1958 he then taught music at Washington High School in Kansas City.
Meanwhile, Clayton Krehbiel, Ralston's mentor and then dean of the music school, went to Russia. He asked Ralston to direct the KU Chorale for him.
"He needed someone cheap to do this gig, and he asked me to fill in," Ralston said. "That was the crossroads of my life."
Ralston went on to earn his Ph.D. and when Krebiel left KU to conduct the Cleveland Chorus in 1966, Ralston stepped into his position. In 1970, he founded the master's and doctoral programs in choral conducting, which he still teaches.
In the 27 years he has been at KU, Ralston has witnessed much of the University's history.
"He's like a historian," said his wife, Susan Ralston, who teaches vocal music at Schwegler Elementary School, 2201 Oushald Road. "KU is very dear to his heart. When Hoched was, it almost like losing a definite friend. He's also done a lot of old KU songs with the choirs."
In addition to keeping KU's traditional music alive, Ralston has helped build its major works program that exposes students to choral master works.
"KU now has a huge library of major works," said Randel Wolf, Bakersfield, Calif., doctoral student. "He's built up and that's inspiring."
Susan Ralston said, "He's offered some of the most wonderful musical experiences his students will ever have. I don't know how many kids in their lifetime get to sing the Brahms' Reamion."
Directing such powerful music requires discipline and outstanding musicianship. Ralston has gained a reputation as a musician of high standards, ultimately concerned with preserving the integrity of a piece of music.
"As the years have gone on, his respect for music has increased," said his wife. "He kind of stands in awe of it. So he tries to do as much justice to each
See RALSTON, Page 10.
Holly McQueen / KANSAN
Above: James Ralston directs the Chamber Choir. Ralston has been a key figure in keeping KU's traditional music alive and has helped build its major works program that exposes students to choral master works.
Holly McQueen / KANBAN
At left, Ralston relaxes after a rehearsal. Above, Ralston directs the Chamber Choir through a Bruckner composition. Ralston will retire this year.
music
Hymn meant to ease pain of AIDS
By Sara Bennett
Kansan staff writer
KC chorister who died of AIDS was inspiration
When faced with an issue as terrifying and complicated as AIDS, churches may have a difficult time meeting the spiritual needs of those touched by the tragedy. Sometimes, the best way to deal with the pain is to universalize it in song.
John Fowler, Gladstone, Mo., graduate student, understands the healing power of music in ministry to those whose lives are touched by AIDS. Fowler has set to music an AIDS crisis hymn text he commissioned renowned poet Brian Wren to write. The hymn, used in the AIDS ministry he and his wife are helping create at the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City, Mo., has received widespread recognition.
recognition. Fowler and his wife began the AIDS ministry at the cathedral because they had witnessed the spiritual struggles of infected friends. Fowler said Dan Vowell, a chorister in the cathedral choir who died in April, was a particular inspiration.
"That impact made it more present to us," he said. "I'm particularly aware of the impact that AIDS is having on the arts community. It has a devastating impact on some music's best and brightest."
rower's wife, E. Charmaine Fowler, chairperson of the AIDS task force at the Grace and Holy Trinity, said Vowell inspired the idea for a hymn while he
"He was very interested in the topic," Fowler said. "He said he had no experience with the subject and asked for input. I had a wonderful phone call with him. I felt like I was talking to a sponge."
"Dan was in the choir, so the vehicle that came to mind when you thought of him was a hymn," she said. "It was a way we could incorporate his life work into a resource for other church musicians."
struggled with AIDS.
Fowler met Wren, an ordained minister of the Reformed Church of Great Britain whose hymn texts appear in the hymns of most Protestant denominations, in February at a workshop for church musicians in Overland Park. Fowler approached Wren about commissioning a text dealing with the concerns of AIDS patients and their loved ones.
ture. He was among the few Fowler told Wren of his friends' experiences and his own frustrations in trying to establish an AIDS ministry. He also told Wren about Fred Phelps, a Topeka anti-homosexual minister. Wren communicated with relatives of deceased AIDS patients.
"I tried to be sensitive, to listen to a whole spectrum of experiences," he said. "I try to put words into people's mouths, things they maybe haven't clarified for themselves."
Wren donated half of his commission fee to a Kansas City AIDS program. He said the challenges of writing about AIDS drew him to the project.
Wren said he tried to weave all the information he had gathered into a poem that church congregations could identify with.
I try to cover every aspect of the Christian faith, and thishack hadn't been addressed yet," he said. "It was
a challenge to try to write something to speak to and pray around those issues of what AIDS does to people and those who love them."
The text had to be completed with some sense of urgency because Fowler wanted Vowell to experience it before his death. While the piece was being written, Vowell's condition worsened. Fowler had given up on receiving it in time when the text arrived in the mail the week after Easter.
I was completely overwhelmed by the text, "said Fowler, who immediately sat down to compose the hymn's melody. That night, he played it for Vowell, who was profoldly moved.
who was probably not here.
"The nurses said every time they went in to feed him or give him his medication, they had to take the paper out of his hands," Fowler said.
paper out of his marks. P. O'Leary, Vowell died a week later, and the hymn, entitled "When Illness Meets Denial and Rejection," had its first performance at his funeral, April 29, 1983.
Since then, the hymn has been performed at the joint conference of the Hymn Society of the USA and Canada and the Canadian Liturgical Society. Fowler submitted it as an entry in the 1903 new hymn competition of the Kansas City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. It will be announced as a winner in September.
Fowler said the hymn has enriched both his life and the Trinity Cathedral's fledgling AIDS ministry, while waving tribute to the life of Dan Vowell.
white pearls on my desk. "It has focused our thoughts on the needs and concerns of persons with AIDS more acutely," he said. "It provided me the outlet to deal with some of my own pain. I associate it with the loss I've experienced as well as the concern I have for the future."
People and places at the University of Kansas.
calendar
LECTURES AND SEMINARS
"Romance Language," a play by Peter Parnell, will be read by English Alternative Theatre at 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday at Downs Auditorium in Dyche Hall, Free.
EXHIBITIONS
"Contemporary Czech and Slovakian Photography" Exhibit runs through Oct. 3 at Kress and Balconies Galleries in Spencer Museum of Art.
"Canyon Revisited: Rephotographing the 1923 Grand Canyon Expeditions"
Exhibit runs through Sept. 26 at Museum of Natural History.
"NCAA Laughead Collection" Exhibit runs through Sept. 11 in the gallery on level 4 of Kansas Union.
...
QUIPS AND QUOTES
'Ugly Kid Joe' singer charged with assault
COLUMBUS, Ohio — William Crane IV, lead singer of the rock band Ungy Kid Joe, was charged with felonious assault after allegedly urging 10,000 concertgoers to join him in attacking the security guards.
Crane, arrested after the Friday night show, also faces a charge of inciting a riot.
Charge of insuring Police were unsure what prompted the outburst during the warm-up show before the main event, Def Leppard, at Cooper Stadium.
Detective Zachary Scott said Crane screamed, "kill the pigs," jumped on a guard's back and hit him with a microphone stand. The audience responded with cheering and a few men close to the stage also attacked the guard, who wasn't seriously hurt.
Ugly Kid Joe is known for the song "I Hate Everything About You."
Tryaguineapig
ANAHEIM, Calif. --- A pet rat living in a station wagon with a homeless family attacked and killed a 4-month-old boy as his parents slept.
A friend of the Gigueres, Steve Smith, said the family caught the rat when they were living in a motel.
"It was a wild rat, like a sewer rat, and they caught it as a pet," he said. They kept it even though it bit family members on several occasions, he said.
"I told them, 'You need to get rid of the rat,' and they still continue to keep it," he said.
See QUIPS, Page 9