By Alex Cornacchia, Contributing Writer
Westborough – It was 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning, May 13, and the house was packed.
The venue was intimate, with room for no more than perhaps 50 or 60 people. But the seats covered with red patterned fabric were filled with patrons adorned in all manner of floral blouses and cardigans. The sounds of the pianist practicing chords and runs mingled with bursts of loud conversation and the high whistling of hearing aids. A few latecomers hobbled in, staring out across a sea of gray and white hair in search of a place to sit.
Finally, the day’s performers emerged. In black bottoms, white tops, and sequined turquoise scarves, the 20 women gathered by the piano. The director murmured and gestured instructions, rearranging the group until everything was just so. There was a shuffling of papers as the women opened their black binders, then everything went quiet. The director turned around to face the audience.
The Hundredth Town Chorus was ready to begin its performance at Christopher Heights, an assisted living facility in Marlborough.
The chorus, based in Westborough (the 100th town incorporated into the state of Massachusetts, hence the name), was started back in 1949 by the Westborough Woman’s Club. The group has always provided a community for women who like to sing to gather and make music (it remains all-women to this day), but the chorus is perhaps best known for its other mission: bringing music to those who can no longer travel far to find culture. Namely, people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Wendy Damoulakis, the chorus’s director, is sensitive to the fact that their audiences don’t have much freedom to choose where they go or what they’re listening to. Because of that, she always tries to incorporate a few pieces that they’re likely familiar with from their past.
Those are usually well received. At the May 13 concert, a woman laughed out loud when she heard the chorus sing a line she knew “I get no kick from champagne” then preceded to hum along to the rest of the Cole Porter tribute. When Damoulakis asked who the leading lady in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was, preceding the chorus’s rendition of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” there were several shouts of “Marilyn Monroe!” The revelry in these callbacks to the old days was evident.
But that’s not all they do.
“There’s a fine balance,” Damoulakis explained, “between singing to your audience and maintaining musical integrity to the group so they’ll continue to grow.”
Damoulakis knows something about guiding musical growth. When she first took over as director in 1981, the chorus exclusively sang church hymns. Not keen on continuing that particular tradition, she shook up the program in favor of spirituals, show tunes, or whatever else spoke to her.
“I expanded their wings,” she grinned.
It hasn’t all been easy the past 34 years. The chorus doesn’t hold formal auditions all that’s required is an ability to sing on pitch so the musical backgrounds of members vary widely, which can make it hard to find music that suits everyone’s abilities. Sometimes the audiences aren’t particularly engaged, the chorus’s singing falling, literally, on deaf ears (“I can’t hear!” One woman lamented before the start of the May 13 concert, to which a staff member replied: “Don’t worry, they’re loud.”)
The chorus has a tradition: at the end of each concert, the members disperse in search of an audience member to talk to. And that’s what it’s about, really. Not the difficulties, but the connections with each other, with their audiences, reaching across generations with the one universal language we’ve got.