Jane Sullivan Choral Library gives choral directors a way to plan for better days
Just as gardeners survive the winter blues by poring over seed catalogs, eagerly awaiting when they can get back in the dirt, the Jane Sullivan Choral Library in Fairway is giving choral directors an online way to plan for better days. This remarkable and ever-burgeoning subscription library of choral scores to rent is part of the William Baker Choral Foundation.
The library was started five years ago by the ever-enterprising William Baker. The Foundation has always had a respectable library of its own. But it took a quantum leap in 2015 when Baker, a native Georgian who also has a branch of the Festival Singers in Atlanta, heard about the impending bankruptcy of one of Atlanta’s largest choral organizations.
“We bought the choir’s library, which quadrupled the size of our holdings,” Baker said.
The group then heard of a university that had to relinquish all of the choral music in its library. “It was a deal where either someone takes it or it goes to the dumpster. That collection, which went back 80 years, included rare editions that have been long out of print, authoritative editions of European masters.”
Baker has been adding even more titles by acquiring the libraries of other churches, as well as from Kansas City Public Schools, which needed to jettison some of the district’s music, including an impressive African American music collection.
The library is named after Jane Sullivan of Marietta, Georgia, a longtime supporter of the Choral Foundation who just happens to be a retired librarian. In 2016, Baker took Sullivan to breakfast to ask her for $25,000 dollars to staff and build the library. To his delight, she said yes. Baker says that after Sullivan made the donation, “a lot of things came together, almost miraculously.”
For more than 20 years, the Choral Foundation has had its headquarters on the first floor of a building in Roeland Park. The top floor had not been occupied in decades, so Baker approached the owner of the building and negotiated a dramatically reduced rent in exchange for renovating the upstairs area. That meant removing walls, removing outdated wiring, fixing holes in walls and repainting.
With additional donations of filing cabinets, tables, furniture and computers, Baker had all he needed for a functional library.
The pandemic has given Baker the opportunity to give his full attention to the library. Baker, his wife, Laura Renee, and daughter Marguerite have been making major headway cataloging the music in still-unopened boxes. There are now 4,000 titles available online.
“Every time we open a box, there’s a new treasure,” Baker said. “We found German editions in old German script of the cantatas of Buxtehude. They’re beautiful and very authoritative editions and have certainly been out of print for decades. We have a Scottish psalter from 1929, one of those old traditional psalters which have music in the top half of the book and words in the bottom half. That book’s a hundred years old. We even have Sacred Harp hymnals.”
John Schaefer, canon musician emeritus of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, where he was organist and led the choir for over 40 years, has had a chance to peruse the Jane Sullivan Choral Library. Now retired, Schaefer says that looking through the library made him long for his days of being a choir director.
“Dr. Baker has an amazing amount of music,” Schaefer said, adding that the work is very organized.
“I like conservative contemporary music, and I was surprised at all of the Zoltan Kodaly, Hugo Distler, Benjamin Britten and Copland. I also noticed a lot of Oxford University Press releases that are no longer in print, particularly of Tudor music. Now if I only had a choir.”
Natalie Hackler does have a choir, and she’s been using the Jane Sullivan Choral Library since the beginning of the year. As music ministry coordinator at the United Methodist Church in Hiawatha, Kansas, Hackler oversees a choir with a very small budget. She says she appreciates being able to acquire choral music at an affordable price and also the personalized phone consultations with Baker.
“It’s really helpful because it’s just a flat fee and I can borrow all the pieces and copies I need, and then I have a year to get them back,” she said.
“I can call Bill and tell him I need a couple of anthems I’d like to put together quickly, this is how many people I have and this is how high my soprano can sing. Then he’ll suggest things that I can then check out online. His expertise is exactly what I needed.”
For a yearly subscription of $150, any choral organization or individual can join the library. Members can check out an unlimited number of shorter works and as many copies as needed. Larger masterworks, like Handel’s “Messiah,” are rented for $4 each. The renter just needs to return the scores within a year and pay for shipping both directions.
When the pandemic coast is clear, Baker says he’s looking forward to reinstating his “Saturdays at the Sullivan,” when the community can visit the library, marvel at the collection, enjoy free coffee and doughnuts and even leave with some free music.
“Both times I’ve gone to ‘Saturday at the Sullivan,’ I’ve come home with some great, free pieces,” Hackler said. “Bill does a lot of good things for the community.”
Working on the library is occupying Baker’s time during the lockdown, but the thought of leading his choirs once again in concert is never far from his mind. He’s unsure when that might be.
“We don’t really know what the world’s going to be like when we emerge, and we don’t know when we’re going to emerge,” he said. “But the more ideas we have, the more directions we can go, and the more equipped we are to go in those directions, the better off we’re going to be.
“If I’m a church music director and can have a year’s worth of planning done, then it puts me in a stronger position. Browsing our library is one of the ways to do that planning. I hope the Jane Sullivan Choral Library can help the choral community get going again.”
The Jane Sullivan Choral Library, 5450 Buena Vista St, Roeland Park. For more information, 913-488-7524 or www.SullivanChoralLibrary.org.
Celebration at the Station
The Kansas City Symphony’s Bank of America Celebration at the Station has always been Kansas City’s official beginning of summertime. Just because the big Memorial Day weekend celebration has been canceled this year because of the pandemic, doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate with our beloved orchestra. The Kansas City Symphony will present “best of” compilations from the last several years of Celebration at the Station 7 p.m. May 24 and 8:30 p.m. May 25 on public television station KCPT, channel 19.
The broadcasts will feature special guests like Oleta Adams, John Brancy and Capathia Jenkins, as well as performances by local favorites, like Bobby Watson, The Elders and Jim Birdsall. You can count on Michael Stern conducting lots of patriotic favorites and showstoppers like the 1812 Overture.
Many thanks to the Kansas City Symphony for making these archival performances available so we’ll know when summer begins. I’m afraid some of us are even forgetting what season it is.
You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.