In the Angel Choir rehearsal room at Granville’s First Presbyterian Church, a trim of wallpaper runs along the top of the walls with colorful musical notes. Past Angel Choir group photos hang below featuring former singers wearing their white choir robes posing in neat rows. On the counter near the door, there are pitchers of water and red Solo cups, available for the singers to grab a drink between songs.
Joy Hire stands confidently at the front of the room behind her music stand. At 73, she moves with the ease and energy of someone half her age in her white sneakers, cuffed jeans, and bright red lipstick. She’s been doing this work for a long time, and today is just like any other Sunday: She’s poised, calm, and ready to guide her Angel Choir through rehearsal.
The First Presbyterian Church Angel Choir is open to youth in grades seven through twelve. They meet every Sunday evening to rehearse. Girls rehearse from 4:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. and boys follow from 5:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tonight, there are six girls at rehearsal.
“Can you play the soprano line again?” one of the girls asks.
The group’s accompanist, Meredith Needham, plays the line back. She has accompanied the Angel Choir for more than 20 years.
Though it was early October, the Angel Choir was already rehearsing Christmas music for the annual Christmas Candlelight Walking Tour on Dec. 6. Some of these songs are fairly new to Hire’s singers, so they are still in the beginning stages of learning their parts.
Hire sings along with the altos as she conducts, helping them get more familiar with the music. She pauses her singing to say “No breath,” indicating where she wants the sound to carry.
When they finish the page of music, Hire says, “Put it away!” but immediately changes her mind. “No, wait, turn the page,” she says with a bright smile. A few of the singers groan playfully as they turn the page.
They sing through a few more measures of music on the next page before she tells them to put their music away, for good this time.
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Hire has always had music in her life. Born and raised in Princeton, Illinois, she grew up the daughter of a choir director, which meant practicing or listening to music was a built-in part of her day, whether she liked it or not. But luckily for Hire, she really liked it.
“From the time I was little, I would sit on the piano bench with [my mom] and we’d sing, and she always insisted I was an alto because she was an alto and she always needed an alto or two in her group,” Hire said.
Hire sang in choirs throughout school and college. She attended Denison University as an English major and sang in the Denison Singers ensemble.
After graduating from college, Hire moved to Washington, D.C. and stayed there for a few years. She sang in her church choir in Georgetown and, once she became a mother, she often brought her two young daughters along to rehearsals.
“[Leaders at the church] found out I was musical, and they said, ‘Could you start a little children’s choir?’ And so with my little three and four-year-olds, I started my first choir,” Hire said.
She found easy songs for the kids to learn, and that small group of six marked the beginning of Hire’s passion for working with young singers.
Hire moved back to Granville when she got married to fellow Denison alum Jack Hire in 1992, and the family joined First Presbyterian Church.
“First Presbyterian Church had a really fabulous children’s choir director, Sue Murdock, who became one of my best friends and my mentor there,” Hire said.
There was an adult choir, but there weren’t any opportunities for teenagers to sing and participate in choir. So, in 1993, Hire decided to change that and founded the Angel Choir for singers in grades seven through twelve.
The Angel Choir actually started out as a girls-only ensemble and continued this way for about 10 years, until an especially talented group of boys who had been in the children’s choir were ready to move up. The group has been a mixed ensemble singing SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) music ever since.
“At first, I thought, what do I do with [the boys]? Because I’ve been so used to having, you know, SSA [soprano, soprano, alto] music,” Hire said.
She eventually figured out how to select SATB music that suits her choir.
“I think one of my strengths is knowing how to choose music for the kind of choir I have,” Hire said.
Hire loves working with these young singers year after year. And she doesn’t currently have any plans to stop her work with the Angel Choir.
“Lots of people who have reached my age have stopped doing what they do by then. But I think I feel very young. I think that doing what I do… feeds my soul, first of all, and it makes me sad to think of not doing it,” Hire said.“They don’t tire me out. I still have a lot of energy. And I still love, I just love making music.”
By the time the girls’ rehearsal finishes, the boys are already trickling in. They grab their music from their assigned cubby in the back corner of the rehearsal room. Hire greets the boys by name as they walk in and offers them water from the pitcher in the front of the room.
They begin with a vocal warm-up. Hire cheerfully announces, “Perfect attendance!” as the last two boys walk in. There are 13 boys in the Angel Choir this year.
Though some of the boys are talking, the pianist, Needham, keeps playing the warm-up chords. When the warmup is over and it’s time to sing, the talking stops and the boys focus.
“I don’t think I heard one ‘t’ sound in ‘great,’” Hire tells them. “Mark it in.” The boys smile and take out their pencils.
During the soprano and alto-only part, some boys sing jokingly in falsetto as they follow along in their music. Hire giggles.
She taps her foot and mouths the words as the boys sing, often conducting with both hands. She hands out a new piece, “This Child Shall Be Our Peace” by Dan Forrest.
“First of all, let me tell you what part you’re singing,” Hire says.
“I have a question, can I sing baritone?” one singer asks hopefully. Hire replies “no,” with a big smile on her face.
Hire begins teaching each voice one part at a time. She counts quickly through the held notes to speed up the learning process. Then she puts all the voice parts together, counting in tempo now. She cuts the singers and the pianist off, but the boys keep singing in harmony, finishing the phrase a cappella.
“All right, tenor 2s, we got this,” one student calls out before they do their last run-through. “That was great, boys,” said Hire, satisfied with their sight-reading.
Right at 6 p.m., they all get up, still singing to themselves as they put away their folders and say their goodbyes. Hire closes her music folder and watches as the room empties.
Shelby McNeal writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.