'I will always be involved in choral music.' Columbus Symphony Chorus director to retire
Next weekend, members of the Columbus Symphony Chorus will walk onto the stage of the Ohio Theatre for the symphony’s season finale.
As they do multiple times each season, the 133-member, all-volunteer ensemble will unite in voice to make music that soars.
On Friday and Saturday, the chorus will perform a program of English choral favorites. Anglophiles who have watched with interest the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III will surely be delighted by such selections as Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem” and George Frideric Handel’s “Coronation Anthem No. 1.”
More significant than the program, however, is the reason for it: The pieces constitute a kind of musical farewell from the chorus’ longtime leader, conductor Ronald J. Jenkins. After some 41 years at the helm of the chorus, Jenkins is set to retire following the finale.
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End to storied career
Although Jenkins, now 82, says that he feels “about 58 or 60” — and notes that the cardiovascular exercise of wielding a baton often means that conductors live “long, long lives” — he wanted to go out at the top of his game.
“I will always be involved in choral music, somehow — maybe not as a conductor, but in some capacity,” he said. To hear him describe it, his job is something of a calling.
“I love the process of teaching,” Jenkins said. “I love the process of enabling people to get on the same page, at the same tempo, on the same pitch, and the same word pronunciation and vowel sound. ... When in your jobs do you ever have to do something exactly like the person sitting next to you?”
Current Columbus Symphony Music Director Rossen Milanov referred to his colleague as “an institution.”
“He has a great reputation,” Milanov said, “both among friends and also patrons and, most importantly, among the probably thousands of singers that have been making music together with the Columbus Symphony Chorus and Orchestra over the decades of service.”
Among those singers is Lauren Grangaard, an alto in the chorus since 2016.
“He has an incredible amount of compassion and care that he shows to all of the members,” Grangaard said. “We’re talking about 133 members that he keeps tabs on.”
Youthful music-making
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1940 to Paul and Charlotte Jenkins, Ronald — the youngest of three siblings — grew up surrounded by music and unafraid of performing it.
“My first church solo, I was 6 years old,” he said. “My dad stood me up on the communion table and I sang a hymn. I didn’t think there was any big deal to standing up and conducting a choir or playing the piano.”
His parents strove to find outlets for their son’s interests and abilities, first signing him up for a local piano teacher and later enrolling him in the St. Louis Institute of Music.
“In fourth grade, I started private piano lessons — every week, half-an-hour — and an hour of theory class,” said Jenkins, who subsequently earned degrees from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Jenkins got the conducting bug after a stint studying at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts. Then, he accepted a position running the music program at a Presbyterian church in St. Louis.
“Every week, you were up there doing things. I was an organist and choirmaster in those days,” said Jenkins, whose work was sufficiently admired to be written about in an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That article garnered the attention of leaders at the First Community Church on Cambridge Boulevard, who sought out Jenkins to take over their music program. He moved to Columbus in 1973.
“They had a tradition, but it needed someone new to come in,” said Jenkins, who remained with the church until 2019. By then, he had long balanced that role with his job running the Columbus Symphony Chorus.
“In August of 1982, on a Friday morning, I was on a ladder with paint all over me because I had been painting the kitchen of my house in Grandview. I got a call from the manager of the CSO asking me if I could meet for lunch — not tomorrow but today,” he said.
Jenkins got the job.
Years at the CSO Chorus
Back in the early 1980s, the Columbus Symphony Chorus was larger in sheer numbers than it is today, but attendance among members was spotty.
“Many of the (singers) were ready to retire, so it worked out that we got ourselves down to a more manageable, tighter group of (about) 135 people,” said Jenkins, who speaks with pride of the strides his group has made over the decades.
“They’ve grown immensely in their ability to read music, they’ve gown immensely in their blend and their sound,” he said.
Jenkins maintains a strict rehearsal schedule: usually beginning near the end of August, chorus members convene on Tuesday nights through the symphony’s season. They break for holidays in December, and sometimes they are called back for summertime concerts.
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The rigorous approach has paid musical dividends: Under Milanov’s tenure, in particular, the chorus has been tasked with performing a series of demanding, complex pieces, including “Sanctuary Road” by Paul Moravec and the “Glagolitic Mass” by Leos Janacek.
“I never had to program around the chorus,” Milanov said. “Sometimes you, as a music director, might have some restrictions. ... But, with the chorus, I always felt that whatever I was dreaming of programming, they and Ron would absolutely embrace and deliver.”
Jenkins, who also initiated and conducted the symphony’s “Holiday Pops” programs from the 1980s through 2019, observes that many choral works performed by the chorus are counted among symphony-goers’ most beloved.
“Since 1982, we have given 15 ‘Carmina Buranas,’” he said. “These are the audience favorites. Verdi’s ‘Requiem,’ 12 times. The Beethoven Ninth (Symphony), 22 times, including two on the Columbus Commons that we did in the rain.”
It’s an impressive workload for a chorus made up entirely of volunteers (who must audition to win spots in the group).
“My folks get up at 6 a.m., 7 a.m., work a full day, run home, take care of the kids, put on their white tie and tails or black dresses and get to the concert,” Jenkins said, adding, “Whenever they celebrate me, and this is really important, they’re celebrating the volunteer chorus. They are the ones that make it happen.”
A fitting finale
Yet, next weekend, Jenkins will be the star of the show. He chose the all-English program not only because he loved the music, but because it would give him one last challenge.
“I wanted it to be a program that I would have to work at,” he said.
Choosing to step aside from his usual role of programming concerts, Milanov invited Jenkins to curate the entire show.
“You can see that there are a lot of elements that represent his love for English music,” Milanov said.
In addition to the chorus, soprano Gwendolyn Coleman and baritone Simon Barrad will be featured; concertmaster Joanna Frankel will also serve as a soloist on violin.
Undoubtedly, some chorus members will sing with a tear or two in their eyes.
“I think it’s going to reach chorus members and audience members alike — both from a challenge standpoint and also from the emotional side of things,” Grangaard said.
In retirement, Jenkins, who lives with his husband Will Davis in the Arena District, plans to refine his golf game, take up pickleball and do some traveling. He has no children but “many nephews and nieces, including four great-great nephews,” he said.
And he is philosophical about saying "so long" to his life’s work.
“I got my opportunity to get up there with the baton, which, by the way, is the same baton I’ve used since I was 25 years old when my dad bought it for me,” he said. “And it’ll be the one I use (next weekend).”
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At a glance
The Columbus Symphony and Chorus will perform “Welcome to Spring” — also the final concert of conductor Ronald J. Jenkins — at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Ohio Theatre, 39 E. State St. Tickets start at $9.84. For more information, visit columbussymphony.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Symphony Chorus director Ronald Jenkins to retire
