Favorite pieces will be featured in Lincoln-Way Area Chorale’s concert celebrating three decades of educating, uniting, enriching and inspiring through music.LEGACY: Honoring the Past, Looking to the Future will be performed April 25 and 26 at The United Methodist Church of New Lenox.“This is just wonderful.
I am so excited that we’re celebrating everything that the group has been and what we’re going to be,” said Elisé L. Greene, artistic director of Lincoln-Way Area Chorale.Kim Kalnins contacted Charles “Chuck” Stark in 1995 when the Mokena Community Park District was looking to sponsor a community choir for Lincoln-Way High School alumni who still wanted to sing together.
Stark, who retired in 1991 after 25 years as Lincoln-Way’s chorale director, agreed to direct an adult community chorale if there was a large enough turnout to make it worthwhile, according to the chorale’s website. More than 70 people showed up to the first rehearsal.The group, which went on to become an independent 501(c)(3) organization, honors its history with a concert including “All My Trials” and “The Last Words of David” to honor Stark, who was the chorale’s artistic director until 2012.
“Before the pandemic there was a dedication for the auditorium at Lincoln-Way Central where he had taught for a million years it seems. He was still alive and he requested those pieces for the dedication so I knew that those were a couple of his favorites,” said Greene, of Tinley Pa.