Section Leaders are very important to the chorus. In addition to keeping attendance, Section Leaders answer musical questions (rehearsal markings, etc.) and help to maintain the high level of musicianship of NYCS members. Here is a brief introduction to our eight Section Leaders:

MICHELLE TURNER – SOPRANO I (email: mturner88@aol.com)

I first sang in a choir as a young teen in church – would you believe as an alto? I could hardly wait to join the chorus in high school, mostly because I wanted to be in the annual musical and wear all those costumes. In college I sang in the Oratorio Chorus; it was an incredible thrill to sing with an orchestra for the first time.In the intervening years I was always involved in church choirs, either singing or conducting, and I sang with the Northern Choral Society when I lived near Watertown, NY. Then in the summer of 1998 I moved to NYC and saw the ad for NYCS auditions in the Sunday New York Times.

As a NYCS member I have had many unique opportunities that are afforded to the very few. Here is just a sampling: performing Mahler’s 8th Symphony in Beijing, China (2001); on the NYCS tour to Paris, singing in the mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame and Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeternain the Cathedrals of Reims and Chartres (2004); and singing in the mass at Basilica of San Marco on another NYCS tour to Venice (2006).

I have not even begun to mention all the wonderful concert halls (Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center) and the amazing conductors and performers with whom we have had the privilege to collaborate. And then there is all that glorious music I’ve been able to sing!As a public school music teacher, I do my best to plant seeds of enjoyment of singing and share my excitement about choral singing with the fourth and fifth graders at my school.

JODI CONTI – SOPRANO II (email: jodiconti@yahoo.com)

Member of NYCS since 1991, minus a few years for grad school. Mother of two boys who love hearing our concerts. Living in Brooklyn, working at HSBC as a brand manager of the Private Bank division.Some of my favorite NYCS memories:

• My first Carnegie Hall concert in May 1992, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. I actually had to stop singing at the end, to catch my breath. I remember having that feeling only once again, when I crossed the tape to finish my first NYC Marathon.
• Returning to rehearsals after the birth of each of my two sons, to resume the “normal” life I love so much and to receive so many truly warm wishes from so many friends here.
• Finally hearing the entire chorus sing Happy Birthday to me on June 10, 2002. Thank you, Jack, because attending two rehearsals on the 8th and the 10th when your birthday is on the 9th would have been a cruel twist of fate otherwise.
• Performing Carmina Burana and Harmonium on the Metropolitan Opera stage in May 2003. It just doesn’t get better than that.

When I am not singing, working, or hanging with my kids, you will find me on skis, rollerblades or some running path, or at the opera, or playing my piano. [Jodi volunteers on the Board of Managers and the Marketing Committee.]

SYLVIA HOISINGTON – ALTO I (email:sylviahoisington@aol.com)

In March 1968 a friend sent me a clipping that the NYCS was having auditions for their next concert (the Bach B-Minor Mass). I love Bach, so I went for the audition. I can’t imagine how different my life would have been without the wonderful music and dear friends of the NYCS over all these years!I grew up on a farm in Vermont and attended a one-room schoolhouse for my first eight grades. No high school in town, so I attended school in the next town to the south. After graduating from the University of Vermont in 1951, I was hired as a lab technician at the University of Rochester Medical Center. I sang with both the Rochester Oratorio Society and Rochester Bach Chorus.

After nearly 16 years in Rochester I decided to make a huge change in my life and moved to NYC (August 1967). I worked for an investment banking firm. Early retirement in 1989 opened up opportunities for me to participate in NYCS tours, which I have loved. My first NYCS tour was to Eisenstadt, Austria, in 1991. All of the tours have been extraordinary, including singing in special places and forming much closer friendships with fellow NYCS members.The NYCS has become like a family to me. I wish us another 50+ years of making glorious music together.

DEE KITTANY – ALTO II (email: ultimalto@aol.com)

I grew up in Arkansas, in the heart of the Mississippi delta, and I can’t recall any part of my life that was devoid of music. I started piano lessons in first grade, played in the “rhythm band” (aka Orff ensemble) and sang Latin masses in Catholic grammar school, and was in high school chorus and band – I’ll never forget my first (very frustrating) attempt at marching and playing flute at the same time!I decided not to pursue a formal music degree because I couldn’t be sure I was good enough to cut it outside my small town world. Instead, I majored in biology and discovered my passion for teaching while in grad school at Saint Louis University. I applied for high school teaching positions, willing to go just about anywhere. I never dreamed it would be New York City, that crazy-magical place I had never even visited (despite the fact that my dad grew up in Brooklyn).

After moving to the Big Apple in 1972, I discovered NYCS Summer Sings the following year. It didn’t take me long to realize that NYCS was a chorus I wanted to be part of. Although I passed the audition in September of 1973, I was wait-listed because the Alto II section was at capacity. Disappointed, but not wanting to miss out entirely while waiting for a spot, I asked Bob De Cormier if I might come on Tuesday nights and audit the rehearsals from the balcony in Cami Hall. I happily occupied that perch each week, carefully following my scores of the Bach B Minor Mass and the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, and learning a great deal. That February I was invited to move downstairs to begin one of the most fulfilling involvements of my life.I was a science teacher for more than three decades in two schools (one all girls, the other all boys!). During that time I also completed a graduate program in Pastoral Studies and began courses at Westminster Choir College, mostly in conducting and choral pedagogy – all of which led to my present work as Director of Campus Ministry and vocal/choral music teacher at Xavier High School.

I credit both Bob De Cormier and Jack Goodwin with inspiring me to pursue further music studies. The energy and excellence of my fellow choristers in NYCS, as well as those in the music ministry at my parish (St. Francis Xavier in Chelsea) and the dozen members of the Ignatian Schola, keep me exceedingly grateful that I live in this glorious world of music.

It is difficult to choose from among the many sparkling highlights of my years with NYCS. I know that I will never cease to be filled with wonder as the first sounds of a performance become real, whether in Carnegie Hall, on a hilltop overlooking the Aegean, or in a 17th century church in Mexico – and that I’ll be thinking “Wow, I can’t believe I get to do this!”

DAVID USKALI – TENOR I (email: duskali@aol.com)

I’m originally from Chicago; my family moved to Michigan when I was twelve. I have a BA degree in Journalism, with a minor in Advertising. The acting bug hit me when I acted in musicals at Grosse Pointe Theatre in Michigan. I moved to New York to give showbiz a try. At that time a lot of Broadway shows were rock musicals (ala “Hair”) and I couldn’t sing a rock song to save my life. So I decided to study voice and opera and went back into advertising to pay for lessons.

I have sung with the New York Choral Society for over twenty years. For ten years I volunteered on the Board of Managers, working on advertising and promotion. I’ve loved every minute of singing with the Choral Society, but a personal highlight has to be singing with Peter, Paul and Mary. They were icons of mine when I was in high school. When we sang with them on Broadway for a week back in 1989 I thought, “Well I guess I did make it to Broadway after all!”

I’m now collaborating on a new musical called “The Major and the Minor,” based on the movie of the same name. I’ve also completed a full-length play titled “Penance.” Anyone know a producer out there? (I’m not kidding.)

DONALD SOUTHERN – TENOR II (email:Southern69@comcast.net)

In 1954, when I was five, my mother took me with my brother and sister to NBC Studios in Brooklyn, where my father ran the scenery shop and they just happened to be rehearsing Peter Pan. Well, there was Mary Martin flying around the nursery set while we stood ten feet away, seriously agog. The clincher, for me, was when she winked at me and then picked me up and flew me over to the mantel, where she dropped me off before flying through the big window and off to Neverland. Show business seemed like a good career choice for the future!

And so it was.In high school I spent many weekends working in the shop on shows that had to get out the next day. I learned very quickly that nobody needs the scenery or costumes at 8:10pm. I was then lucky to ride the wave of moviemaking in New York in the 70’s and 80’s, and eventually met my partner of nearly 30 years, Cliff (who also sings with the chorus), on a movie.I spent some years in the scenery shop and then as Costume Coordinator at the Metropolitan Opera. One worked every day from 7am until the curtain went up (for very little pay), and you got to deal with some seriously temperamental types. The great bonus of that job was to be near all that unbelievable singing.Cliff and I live in Manhattan and up in Connecticut. Life has never been as good as it has since we joined the New York Choral Society. It means a great deal to me to sing with this group – it is so very satisfying.

DAVID EKSTROM – BASS I (email: dekstrom@pace.edu)

I live in Manhattan and teach at Pace University’s School of Nursing. When I first moved to NYC in 1973 to pursue a degree in nursing, I knew I wanted to stay here and to find a chorus to help me establish “roots.” (And having come from Oberlin College, I also wanted quality!) I attended choral concerts for a whole year. After a NYCS performance of Missa Solemnis, I was pretty sure I had found the right chorus. I attended NYCS Summer Sings, where I met some very friendly people, and that sealed the deal. When I joined in 1974, I felt proud to be accepted to the NYCS.

Although I love the high quality of our performances and the exciting programming, it is the “community” aspect of the NYCS that has kept me coming back all these years (as well as “Small town boy from Ohio makes it in the Big Apple!”). A few of my special NYCS memories include performing on the Today Show at 7am and having my pediatric patients say “I saw you on TV!” when I returned to work that day at 9am, having a member ask why I was wearing a suit to rehearsal on the day I defended my doctoral dissertation at NYU (the entire chorus applauded for me at the break), and teaching the chorus Swedish pronunciation (twice!) and then hearing them actually sound Swedish at the performance.In the many years that I have been a NYCS member, I have always found something stimulating and comforting about “us” and what we do. I hope all NYCS members will have as rich an experience with the chorus as I have had.

ED RODRIGUEZ –BASS II (email: Edrod423@hotmail.com)

My musical training began at age 9 with piano lessons when I lived in Los Angeles. Musical activities continued in high school when we moved back to San Antonio, where I was born. I played French horn in the band and sang (and conducted) my church’s youth choir. While at the University of Texas, I sang with a church choir, studied music theory, and took piano and organ lessons (all these activities confused my friends, who knew I was a Chemistry major).After college, I sang with the Washington (DC) Oratorio Society and Washington Bach Consort. I also participated in a small early music chorus, a larger chorus, and an informal early music instrumental group while at the University of Chicago. Later I sang with the Texas Baroque Ensemble and played harpsichord and percussion with the early music instrumental group, Aeolian Players.

I came to New York in 1995 for what I thought would be a one-year experience. But one year later I found a great job (with a company providing a stock market data to brokers) and my wife had already decided that she wanted to live in NYC. So I auditioned for five choruses and was accepted by them all; NYCS was the one chorus I decided to join. I had enjoyed the NYCS Summer Sing I attended – conducted by NYCS Music Director Jack Goodwin – and that season the chorus singing with Peter, Paul and Mary (my favorite group when I was in college). How could I pass that up?

Singing with NYCS has been a great adventure. Some of the most memorable moments have been performing with tenor Andrea Bocelli, singing with Aretha Franklin (filling in for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti!) at the GRAMMYS, singing Christmas carols at the Bronx Zoo in freezing weather, and those six performances of Carmina Burana (from memory!) with the American Ballet Theatre on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. I’ve also enjoyed singing with the NYCS Chamber Singers for several seasons. My NYCS experience has also included various volunteer positions, such as organizing auditions, helping to set up the chorus’s database, and running various data reports.