Sometimes it’s best just to let the music do the talking.
On May 6 members of the longstanding Keynotes Choir stood tall as they worked their way through nearly 20 numbers – some Scottish folk, traditional Zambian music, American folk hymns, modern popular tunes – before an audience at the West Vancouver Seniors’ Activity Centre.
They capped off the performance with Don Besig and Nancy Price’s “Say it with a Song!” which probably said more than any proper farewell speech ever could.
“People were sad not only because of the music they wouldn’t be singing anymore, but because they would miss each other, because you become a family,” says the choir’s musical director Marie Payette-Falls.
After 25 years of entertaining the North Shore, Keynotes’ concert in early May was the choir’s last public performance, she says.
“People join these groups not only because of the music, they join because of the fellowship,” Payette-Falls explains. “We’ve kind of grown together.”
She founded the choir in 1993 after moving with her family to Vancouver from Montreal. Payette-Falls had led another choir back home and after moving to Vancouver, where she didn’t know anyone, she jumped at the opportunity to lead a choir in West Vancouver.
“I always loved music and when I did this in Montreal I remember thinking here I am bringing a whole bunch of disparate people together through music,” she says.
For the past two and a half decades, for most of the year the choir has met every Tuesday morning at the seniors’ activity centre.
Payette-Falls estimates the group has given 150 concerts and performed more than 500 songs during that time.
The choir has always been composed of adults 55 years and older who love to sing. Over the years they’ve performed to appreciative audiences at the seniors’ activity centre and many of the North Shore’s residential care facilities and other public spaces.
“A lot of (our audience) used to go to shows, used to go to concerts, and so it was important to me to really, really have excellent music,” she says. “It was really important to us to give back to them.”
Payette-Falls describes many memorable moments from throughout the decades, highlighting when Keynotes would perform with other choirs in mass events, experimenting with different versions of Christmas songs every year, and the choir’s annual wrap-up parties where her singers would perform a musical tribute and roast.
“Our energy was positive. Joyful. Uplifting. We made a difference. And that’s what I will miss, the love and friendship and the positive impact we made on our audiences,” she wrote in an email.
After 25 years, Payette-Falls is retiring, and with that the choir is retiring as well.
She feels sad about this – many of Keynotes’ members have been with the choir for years. But as the program for the choir’s final performance stated: all good things must eventually come to an end.
She’s confident the impact the choir had in the community with their performances will live on.
“Music is one of those things that you can do for the rest of your life,” she says.
