Offenburger's Iowa

For 20 summers, the troupe now called 'Celebration Iowa' has showcased our best young talent

The first time I saw them, a dozen years ago, they were called the "State Fair Singers and Jazz Band" and they were so good and so fun, I asked via the newspaper if they'd allow a mediocre old baritone to run away with them for the summer.

In June they will start their 20th season of touring the state, and the level of performance by the 37 outstanding high school singers, dancers and instrumentalists seems to get better by the year.

They adopted a new name, "Celebration Iowa," in 1999 after the Iowa State Fair pulled its sponsorship in a move that bewildered and angered two governors, at least one noisy columnist and several thousand rabid fans. But the decision stood, and a year or so later, the group also survived the Des Moines Register ending its long and loyal sponsorship to go in other directions.

This program is proving to be as stubborn as it is good. In fact, it's a whole lot like Iowans themselves are, as portrayed in the Meredith Willson song "Iowa Stubborn," which "Celebration Iowa" still uses to end every show: "And we're so By-God stubborn/ We can stand touchin' noses/ For a week at a time/ And never see eye-to-eye."

Maybe that's because the troupe's roots are at Luther College, in Decorah, which since the beginning has been the major sponsor. Luther has a deep Norwegian heritage, and I think we all know that Norwegians are, well, very strong people, to say it nicely.

"Believe me, I never had a clue when we started that it would go 20 years," said Dennis Darling, 53, the Luther music education professor who co-founded the program. "We were just going to do it once, back there in the Farm Crisis, as a way to try to help lift the spirits of the people of Iowa. Then it was like, 'People seem to like this - should we do another year?' And then the years started adding up."

Little wonder that there is a clamor to keep it going.

The State Fair Singers and Jazz Band, now Celebration Iowa, has brought fun, lively and inspiring entertainment to small towns that seldom ever see a good touring act. Throw in the cities where they've played, too, and the group has appeared in 138 different communities.

It played to huge audiences three shows a day for years at the State Fair, inspiring the construction of a special outdoor, shaded amphitheater on the fairgrounds.

And these Iowa kids thrilled a big crowd on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1995 when they performed at the finish of the trans-USA bicycle ride that promoted the Iowa Sesquicentennial celebration.

Most importantly, the program has positively transformed the lives of the 463 high school students who have been in it the past two decades.

"That's where I learned how much I really loved music," said Eric Cutler, 26, a native of Adel who is one of the most notable alumni of the program. He sang and danced in it in 1993 and '94, and he is now a rising star as a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

"There are not many opportunities when you're growing up in Iowa to perform as much as you get to in that program," Cutler continued. "It allowed me to make music all day long, day in and day out for two summers. That gave me the strength and the courage to say, 'Well, this is what I really love and want to do.' It was a catalyst for me to decide to go on into music academically, to major in it in college and then to try to make it professionally."

A Luther graduate, Cutler won The Met's Young Artist competition in 1998. In addition to performances there, he is singing this year with major opera companies in Houston, San Francisco and Sydney, Australia.

As many as a dozen alumni of the Celebration Iowa program are performing professionally. There are 17 others who are music teachers in Iowa schools, with another 15 to 20 teaching music in other states or still in college completing their music education degrees. Beyond that, the alums span the range of occupations.

Students, sophomores or older, from all over Iowa audition in March in front of music teachers and alumni of the group. There are 20 selected to be the singers and dancers, and 17 are picked for the jazz band.

They report to Luther in early June for three weeks of intense, rigorous rehearsals. Brandon Martin, a cast member who was also an exceptional athlete at Greenfield, told me in 1997 that the camp was "as tough as two-a-days" in football. Late in the month they do a dress rehearsal show in Decorah, then hit the road for about 25 shows across the state.

Instead of concluding their season at the Iowa State Fair, they now close with a final grand performance at the Des Moines Civic Center, with this summer's set for 7 p.m. on Aug. 10. For that one, it helps the group to have a strong advance sale of tickets.

Those are available by calling (563) 387-1009 or on the Internet site www.celebrationiowa.luther.edu, which also has the full tour schedule, applications for students to participate and information for towns about how to host the group.

Dennis Darling continues as program director, and his wife Brenda Darling is the full-time program coordinator. He is on a two-year sabbatical from Luther, teaching vocal music in a high school in a German-American high school in Berlin, Germany.

"My job at Luther is teaching people who will become high school music teachers," he said. "It'd more than 25 years since I'd taught at the high school level, so I thought I should get back out there in the trenches again and see what it's like. And doing it as part of an international adventure seemed like a good way to do it."

Brenda has been there with him, using a laptop computer, e-mail and the Internet to continue her Celebration Iowa work without interruption. Susan Stockseth, a Luther senior from Belmond who performed with Celebration Iowa in high school, minds the program's office at the college in Decorah.

The Darlings will return from Germany in late May for the summer, in time to direct the rehearsal camp where this summer's show will be put together.

Since this is a special anniversary year for the program, Dennis Darling opted to use parts of three shows that were very popular on tours in past years - a jazz set, a Bible set that includes numbers from "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Godspell," and a high-energy country "cowboy" set.

He'll direct the singers and dancers, with help from choreographers who come in as guest instructors. The jazz band will be directed by Paul Bloomquist, who played in the band as a student in 1996 and now is a band director in the Lake Mills schools.

With costumes, sound system maintenance, bus rental and other expenses, the Celebration Iowa budget is $180,000 per year.

The major sponsors helping to defray that, besides Luther College, are the R.J. McElroy Trust of Waterloo, the Mark C. Falb Family Foundation of Dubuque and the Fred Maytag Family Foundation of Newton.

Each of the performers pays $750 for the experience, generally securing sponsorships from businesses and organizations at home, even doing solo concerts at home and selling tickets. They live essentially expense-free through the summer.

Towns pay $2,750 to book the group and must provide host homes as well as a couple of meals.

Several communities - Jesup, Clear Lake, Glenwood - have had the group back a dozen years or more.

"People here just love them," said Jesup City Clerk Marsha McGlaughlin, who has booked Celebration Iowa for a 17th straight year as a featured act during the Farmers Day celebration in mid-July. "We get hundreds of people in the park for their show. People fill every seat we have, more bring lawn chairs and others stand all the way around, too."

The community hires local restaurant owner George Steinbron to serve the cast a dinner of chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, fruit and "always ice cream sundaes for dessert," said McGlaughlin. "The kids all say it's one of the best meals they get all summer."

Dennis Darling said the Jesup trip "is a ritual for us, even right down to the train coming through the park during our performance - in fact, we'd miss it if it didn't. I think they're crazy myself, to keep inviting us back, but I hope they do. It wouldn't be a summer for me without going to Farmers Day in Jesup."

In Clear Lake, the Celebration Iowa performance in City Park is held with a Lions Club hamburger and sweet corn feed and a church group's ice cream social, and it's not unusual to have a crowd of 3,000 or more in front of the bandshell on the lakeshore.

Those small town stops make special memories.

"Our younger son traveled all over Iowa with the group, he learned all the small towns and he still talks about them," said Pat Schnack, of Iowa City.

She and her husband Ron had three sons from City High in the group in the 1980s. Twins Mike and Jeff were the piano and drum players in the program's first couple of years, when they only rehearsed at Luther and then performed at the State Fair. Their brother Steve came along later in the '80s and was a singer and dancer when the group was touring in addition to playing the fair.

The Schnacks are one of four families that have had three kids involved. The others are the Zwiefels of Fenton from the 1980s into the early '90s; the Marlins of Williamsburg in the '90s, and the Amsberrys of Dunlap in the '90s.

"Even though our kids are no longer involved, we still see at least one performance every year," said Tom Amsberry. "You always know you're going to get an evening of good entertainment. When our kids were in it, there were five or six times a summer we'd drive almost all the way across the state to see a show, and then two or three times at the fair. It was a tremendous experience for our kids."

They grow so much musically and in other performance skills.

"I really had no dance experience when I went to camp last summer," said Michael Trotter, a junior at Pella High School who sings bass. "I was really scared about it. I went in there at Luther saying, 'O.K., I'm the suckiest dancer, so it's all right to laugh at me, and I'll laugh right with you.' But they taught me so much that I turned out to be better than I thought I'd be."

His Pella vocal music director, Nickolet Pohorsky Sand, who performed in the State Fair Singers herself in 1987 and '88 when she was a student in Keokuk, said she saw a huge change in young Trotter, who auditioned to be in the group again this summer.

"After his experience last summer, he's kind of like an atom bomb ready to go off, with all that talent," she said. "He came back so determined to work hard and learn all he can about acting and dancing. He's really dedicated now."

Erin Conley, a soprano and junior at Roosevelt High in Des Moines, had been singing in community theater productions since she was 12 years old, but her Celebration Iowa experience last year "helped me improve so much." She said despite all her earlier experience, she'd "never sung a solo until our first show. I was terrified when I got out there, really scared. But through the summer, I became so much more comfortable on stage. I grew to enjoy it."

Conley said the friendships with other cast members and the experiences with other people along the tour became as important to her as the performances.

"We had an off day and we spent it at Camp Sunnyside," she said, mentioning the facility north of Des Moines that was hosting a camp for kids with cancer. "We hung out with those kids all day, doing activities with them, singing a few of our songs. It was so much fun. We played games I hadn't played since I was a little kid myself."

Dani Burke, a soprano and senior at Sioux Center High School, said she "can talk for hours" about all the experiences she's had in two summers with Celebration Iowa and how they've enriched her life.

"My very first summer, in my very first show, we were performing at this huge celebration in Moorhead, Ia.," she said. "It was another one of those towns we go into that most of us have never heard of, and all of a sudden a huge crowd comes out to see us - thousands of people in some of those little places.

"So that night at Moorhead, we were doing a '60s 'pop' set, and we were on our closer, which was a number where we were all in a line and doing the 'Locomotion' dance and singing. I looked down in the front row, and this old lady - I mean super old, like in her 80s or 90s - got up and started singing and dancing with us. That was just so cool. I'll never forget it. You could see the enjoyment in her face."

And now they're getting ready to roll again - from Hawarden to Davenport, from Dubuque to Coon Rapids, from George to Strawberry Point, and lots of other places big and small.

Hundreds of songs. Thousands of miles. And a million smiles.

Chuck Offenburger is an Iowan Magazine columnist who writes from Storm Lake. You can e-mail him at chuck@chuckoffenburger.com

reprinted with permission from The Iowan

The Iowan and Iowa Commerce Magazines
Pioneer Communications Publications
218 6th Ave.
Fleming Building, Suite 610
Des Moines, IA 50309
(515) 246-0402