The Santa Barbara Children’s Chorus is getting a gleeful reprieve, thanks to local businessman Paul Freeman. He didn’t even know of the dormant choir’s existence when he decided, several years ago, that Santa Barbara needed a better choral program for children and that he should be the one to give it to them.
“It was a back-of-mind, pet project/goal of mine for years and I’m excited to be able to finally do it, and do it in a way where I don’t have to worry so much about making money doing it,” explained Freeman, a UCSB graduate.
Freeman himself was a child singer and sang and toured with the Golden State Boys Choir, studied voice with Peggy Norcross, and performed with the Santa Barbara Camerata Choir, UCSB Men’s Chorus and Mixed Choir and the Santa Barbara Symphony.
As president and owner of Professional Development Partners, a business consulting firm for high-tech companies, Freeman is now in a position to give back to the community, filling what he sees as a void in students’ musical training. Freeman and his wife, Tracy, both grew up in Santa Barbara and when they returned in 2008 with their two sons (Cole, now 13, and Parker, 9), he joined long-time theater friend Clark Sayre and has been co-directing the Spring musical at Dos Pueblos High School for the past two seasons. He says it is an experience that further underscored the need for better music education in town.
“The weakest area for the kids was singing,” Freeman said. “We had 60 or 70 kids audition and maybe 10 percent of them could sing well.
“Here are a bunch of kids who are clearly interested and they had all done musicals. They had all been doing all of the theater programs in town but none of them had been getting vocal training.”
Freeman found that while there were many instrument programs in the elementary schools, there were virtually no singing programs.
“The original plan was to start up a for-profit choir and then turn it into a nonprofit once we got it up and running,” explained Freeman, who began teaching in 1984 as assistant artistic director of the Santa Barbara Children’s Theater, where he wrote and directed musicals “for children, by children.” He continued working with the Children’s Theater after moving in 1989 to Los Angeles, where he established the West Valley Children’s Chorus, which he ran for several years.
When he began doing research for the Santa Barbara project, Freeman discovered the Santa Barbara Children’s Chorus, which was no longer active. The timing to take over the nonprofit group was perfect because it was “out of money and out of momentum,” while Freeman and his team — he’s the artistic director and Stephanie Hein Muench is musical director — were ready to pick up the ball and run with it.
Winter session auditions for the nondenominational choir are scheduled between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, 1535 Santa Barbara St. If children have an audition song, they will be asked to perform it. However, Freeman emphasized that “it’s an inclusive group, meaning if you sign up you can get in. We want to make music available to anybody. The audition process is to help us understand what their skill level is.”
Freeman is looking to recruit children in grades four to eight, to give them proper vocal training before they get to high school.
“It’s no secret that money for a lot of that stuff has been cut,” he said. “The schools that do have choral programs are funded through fundraising by PTA or some other outside group. There is very little public funding.”
Freeman applies his management skills to his plans for the chorus.
“Long-term there are three things that we want to do,” he said. “The first is a fee-based program with scholarships available. The idea is to try to get anybody who comes in regardless of skill level or economic situation, and the curriculum is a combination of group singing, solo singing and music theory.”
The students will be exposed to an eclectic array of music. Inspired in part by the popular TV series, Glee, Freeman plans to start a performance choir summer camp to help attract more kids to the program.
Once the classes get up and running, the plan is to start an all-schools choir.
“This would be an outreach program to all the schools that are interested in participating,” he explained. “We would hold in-school auditions and take five or 10 kids per school, depending on how many kids there are, at no cost to them. … We would have one rehearsal a month during the school year and then put on a big, all-school concert at a venue like the Santa Barbara Bowl, the Lobero or the Arlington.”
The third phase of the evolution will be to develop what Freeman describes as a music franchise program.
“This is being done in other big cities,” he said. “Chicago Children’s Choir has this killer program where they put choral teachers in the city schools and they bring the whole curriculum of the main program into the schools as little modules.”
This is clearly a project driven by passion for Freeman, a former professional chef at some of Los Angeles’ top restaurants, who now serves on the Goleta Valley Junior High PTA board and coaches and referees AYSO soccer in his “spare” time. An admittedly very driven and busy guy, he laughed, “I always get asked how do I manage to do all that stuff and I don’t always know the answer.”
“These programs are going to take some time to roll out but the message I want to get across to people is that there’s some meat on this idea of what to do with the choir,” he said. “It’s not like we’re just trying to get some classes running and that’s it. We’d really like to make this more institutional.
“I have a lot of attention on getting it to the point where it’s self-sustaining, where it’s not reliant on one or two people to make the thing happen, because that’s what happens in these groups. You see it all the time.”
When asked to come up with three adjectives to describe himself, Freeman says he’s “optimistic, goal-oriented and creative,” all qualities that will serve him well in his new choir venture.
“It’s sort of a puzzle to figure out and I have pretty high aspirations for it,” he acknowledged. “If I wasn’t running a business that was dealing in very huge deals it might seem more challenging. A lot of people would see this as a big project and a lot of challenges, but for me, compared to some of the other stuff at work I’ve got going on right now, it’s pretty straightforward. I feel like it’s doable.”
F.Y.I.
Auditions for the winter session of Santa Barbara Children’s Chorus are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, 1535 Santa Barbara St. The cost for each 10-week session (which begins Jan. 3) is $299 and includes all music and instruction materials. Scholarships are available. Click here for more information or to register, or call 805.845.6376.
— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at leslie@lesliedinaberg.com. Follow her on Twitter: @LeslieDinaberg.