28-year-old new director has been performing since the age of 4
By Joseph Warner, The Oxford Enterprise Senior Writer

At 28 years old, Brooke Bagley Worthy, the new director of the Oxford Civic Chorus, has already gained an impressive amount of professional chorus experience.

Worthy received her undergraduate degree in music education from Ole Miss in 2003 before going directly into their masters program in the same subject. In 2005, she received a Fulbright grant to finish her master's work in Hungary. She is still amazed that she was given the prestigious national award.

"Literally, I typed into Google, 'how to pay for school abroad,'" she recalls, "and Fulbright came up, and I didn't know what it was. Honestly, I didn't know what it was. And the process began."

Before being awarded the grant, Worthy had to travel to New York and audition for an intimidating group of judges. they called her back, paid her tuition and gave her $1,000 a month to study both the art of sight-reading sheet music in Hungary and how that nation's remarkable youth music programs could be taught in Mississippi.

Having practiced music as a lifestyle since she was four years old, Worthy says she felt slightly intimidated by the Fulbright judges. But she makes that audition sound less imposing thn the one she underwent this past September for her new position with the Oxford Civic Choir.

Besides replacing her former music teacher, UM head choral director Jerry Jordan (who led the civic choir for a year after retiring from Ole Miss), Worthy was also out of practice.

"That was my first time to get up and direct a group in a year and two months," she says, "and I was nervous. Bust as soon as I stepped up to the podium, it went away and it was like, okay, this is it. It felt natual, and, when they sing, I still get chill bumps and all that good stuff."

Worthy also serves as that academic programs and admissions coordinator for the Croft Institute for International Studies at Ole Miss, a job she secured during a yearlong break from music in general. Prior to that, she was the music teacher at Oxford Middle School for three years until it exhausted her last May. She said she loved the children and music, but the logistics, administration and funding issues eventually made it difficult to maintain her passion for her art.

"So this job became available at the university, and I kind of wanted to have a little break from music," she says. "I found it hard having my passion and my hobby as my job, so I thought I would see what it feels like to do an 8-to-5 job. Well, like anyon who's that passionate, I started to miss it after a year."

Now Worthy earnestly leads weekly practices for the choir's Christmas concert to be held December 12. Because the choir went without a director for a few months before installing Worthy, it is a month behind schedule, but that pressure seems only to energize her. Every Monday night the walls of the First Baptist Church resonate with the voices of 30 to 40 community members singing to the beat of a new -- and, in a sense, reborn -- conductor.

From: Oxford Town #796

The Oxford Civic Chorus will hold it's annual fall concert Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at North Oxford Baptist Church. OCC President, Betty Guess, says "We are so excited about the choir this year! It is a true reflection of the immense talent we have in Oxford and the sound is just incredible."

The chorus will present a program featuring several Americana tunes under the direction of Jerry and Jean Jordan. The Jordans are professors emeritus of choral music at the University of Mississippi and have won numerous international competitions. Dr. Jordan says, "The choir is a top notch group after better than a year of training and being auditioned for the first time."

This season, the choir is composed of about 70 singers from the Oxford-Lafayette community and surrounding areas.

"The level of talent this year is incredible," Jordan said.

"This year the choir is singing music that most civic choirs wouldn't even being to tackle," Guess added.

Chorus members will perform a variety of selections including the "Star Spangled Banner," "Shenandoah" and "Simple gifts." A select ensemble will also perform a set of works including "Soldier, Soldier Won't You Marry Me."

The concert will run just over an hour. According to Managing Director and choir member Becky Bourgeois, "There is something for everyone in this program."

The civic choir, which is celebrating it's 11th year, has performed with the University of Alabama at Birmingham concert choir and at Gertrude C. Ford Performing Arts Center. In addition, they are planning a tour to Europe next season.

"Everyone has worked really hard and are dedicated to making the OCC the finest it can possibly be in choral music. this choir will be a great ambassador for the City of Oxford," said Guess.

Jordan added, "I think the audience will be very pleased with what we have in our Civic Chorus."

Admission is $15 for adults and $8 for students. Tickets will be available at the door.

Local singers strive to meet standards set by returning directors
By Lucy Schulze, Senior Staff Writer, The Oxford Eagle

Jerry Jordan drives the tempo from his knees, moving in sign-language dance as fists and fingers articulate every cut-off and crescendo.

You can imagine he's shaping the sound in the air, forming it like a sculptor with the curve of his hands as the weight of 80 voices resounds, full and focused.

He slices through it with critique, chopping his creation into haphazard pieces. A moment later, communal resolve reaches a pitch, and it all comes together in a burst of glory.

Welcome to choir practice with the Oxford Civic Chorus, where the arrival of new directors this year is stretching local singers to the peak of their potential.

Jordan and his wife, Jean, returned to Oxford from Birmingham, Ala., last year and accepted direction of the community choir starting in the fall - he at the baton, she supporting from the piano.

Since their arrival, the choir has more than doubled in size, as more and more singers tune in to the couple's vision.

"Our main goals are to get better as an artistic enterprise and to contribute to Oxford's cultural identity," Jerry Jordan said.

"We get the cream of the crop among choral singers here, and then we expect them to meet high standards."

Back together

In taking the reins of the community chorus, the Jordans are building upon a tradition at the University of Mississippi stretching back to the 1980s.

At Ole Miss, they led one of the most active and accomplished collegiate choral programs in the United States for 21 years. They've remained connected to alumni from the UM Concert Singers, many of whom have gathered for reunion concerts and tours since the Jordans' retirement in 2001.

Joining them today in the Oxford Civic Chorus are many of those Concert Singers alumni, including some who commute from as far as Tupelo, Charleston and Memphis, Tenn., to take part.

Their's a high bar in living up to the expectations the Jordans applied to their collegiate singers, said Walker Swaney, a local dentist in his first year as a chorus member.

"They used to run choirs at Ole Miss that would win first place in the world," he said. "So guess what they expect out of us old people."

Rebecca Bourgeois, a chorus member who sang with the Concert Singers in the late 1980s and early '90s, said she's been amazed that a community group could have the same experience for which they strove back in college.

"If he can take a group of 18- to 22-year-olds and mold them into a world class chorus, I don't see why on earth he couldn't take a group of experienced musicians and do the same thing," she said.

Touring and competing in Erope as part of the Congcert Singers, Bourgeois got a taste of how differently the art form is reguarded there - and what a good director can do to bridge that gap.

"In Europe, we would be signing autographs, but in the U.S., you just don't find as many people whoare interested," she said. "Choral music is not rock-and-roll. Yet he makes it something everyone can understand and enjoy."

Making the match

The coming together of two traditions - that of the Jordans and that of the 10-year-old Civic Chorus - was a matter of timing.

The Jordans had returned to Oxford to focus more on their business, NetVoice, which employs about a dozen people here.

Meanwhile, civic Chorus director Herbert V.R.P. Jones was completing his graduate degree up his tenture with the group.

Community members who knew of both developments were quick to make the match.

Since then, the chorus held a widely praised concert late last year at North Oxford Baptist Church, and performed in Birmingham with the University of Alabama-Birmingham in April. A European tour is also in the works.

Their spring concert is set for this weekend at the Ford Performing Arts Center, featuring a wide variety of works - patriotic, religious, folk and spirituals. Among the highlights, a select ensemble will perform several work, and chorus members Elaine Gelbard will provide a dance accompaniment to a Latin sacred song.

"The piece creates such a mood, and someone suggested it would be very compatible with dance," Jerry Jordan said. "That's something that's not done very often, but she captures the changing moods of the piece very well"

Striving for perfection

For the singers, being part of such a choir is about the rewards of making communal art, as well as pushing themselves as individual singers.

Local realestate broker Cherie Matthews, a musician and former choral conductor herself, joined the Civic Chorus this year to be part of what the Jordans would do.

"They just have such a tremendous reputation," she said. "Jerry can squeeze more music out of a single note than anyone I've ever known."

Coming to rehearsals week after week, the singers absorb more than just musical instruction, Matthews said.

"He strives for perfection, and he also makes you want to strive for perfection," she said. "When you get to work the next day, you think, 'I'm going to work a little harder today.'"

As practice continues for the spring performances, Jerry Jordan takes his place in the center of his choir - a surround-sound posture as he listens to altos and sopranos ahead, basses to the side and tenors behind.

The hard "c" they pronounce at the front of a line must be as crisp as biting off a carrot - perfect in pitch and unison. The sopranos try it again and again.

"It's not something you can't do," he prods. "It's just something you've never been asked to do."

Chiding each section - not to come in too early, not to breathe out of place, not to slow down the tempo - he pulls and puches the air around him, bringing up their volume as if by a giant invisible knob.

As Jerry Jordan points out, even the people who inhabit the world's most powerful political positions must wait months or even years to see the effects of their action.

"this is the ultimate power trip, in my view," he said. "I get immediate gratification from 80 people from every flick of the finger."

The Jordans are also putting their money where their mouth is by establishing the OCC Matching Grant Program for choir development, performances and tours. The couple has pledged up to $20,000 year for three years as a match to community giving with a goal of raising as much as $120,000.