Andy Waggoner. Courtesy of the artist.
Andy Waggoner has his fingers in plenty of pies (though he’s trying to cut down a bit). The local choral director is also an active philanthropist and performer who is known among friends and colleagues within the St. Louis arts community as a person to go to to connect—whether they’re looking for a job, a collaborator, or a new place to create. Ahead of his “Notes from Home” holiday concert tonight at The Sheldon, we caught up with Waggoner to talk about his career with choruses, the causes he holds dear, and trying to make connections in a polarized world.
You’ve been involved with several choruses. What got you into this field originally?
I pretty much knew since middle school that this is what I wanted to be doing, this and church work. I've worked at churches for about 25 years, and I've always had choirs since I've worked at churches. But I started with community choirs in 2005. I am the conductor and artistic director of the Collinsville Chorale, a metro east auditioned community choir. I've been doing that for 17 seasons, but this is actually their final season this year. Then my other community choir is the St. Louis County Community Chorus. I took the helm of that in 2016, and it has just exhibited so much growth; it’s more than doubled in size. So that's part of the reason why I'm stepping away from Collinsville, is to really focus on the [St. Louis County] chorus. I'm finishing up my sixth season this year with them. And then, of course, I have my church. I'm at Webster Hills United Methodist Church in Webster Groves. And I've been there since 2019; it’s a full music program with choir and bells and concerts and all that kind of stuff.
What draws you to this work with choruses? It must be so fascinating working with that many voices and different groupings.
I decided a long time ago that the path that I wanted to take was to work with everyday people. I never had a desire to work with professional choruses or to do the university circuit or anything like that. I've always wanted to sing with teachers and retirees and doctors, and I wanted to sing and make music and lead people for whom it was a hobby. Our world is so polarizing, and it's so nice for us to come together and—I know this is cliché—but sort of leave it at the door. I see it every single day. I hear about it every day we have rehearsal—there's just this healing power of singing and forgetting about what's going on…I decided a long time ago that I wanted to spend my life giving really exceptional musical opportunities to everyday people, not people with music degrees, not people who studied voice. I've taken choirs to Carnegie Hall five or six times, and none of them were professional singers. They were all community choir people or church choir folks. From the beginning, from when I first started conducting in 1997, I've always wanted to provide those opportunities.
You mentioned Carnegie Hall. Tell me about some of your most memorable performance experiences with these choirs.
I took my first group [to Carnegie Hall] in 2002. These are all done through management companies. You're invited to come and sing with other choirs. In 2002, I took 20 people, and we joined maybe five or six other choirs in New York to do a big sort of festival choir. And I did that a few times. Then I was invited in 2011, um, to make my conducting debut at Carnegie Hall. I took probably around 75 singers for that one. Then I was invited again by a different production company in 2018, and I took 150 singers. That experience was absolutely remarkable. Not only was the conducting experience wonderful, but we did works by a Missouri composer, Mark Hayes, and premiered new pieces that he wrote for us at Carnegie Hall. He wrote a few pieces for us and he came to New York with us, so it was just cool thing on top of cool thing on top of cool.I think that was probably the highlight of my career.
Tell me about the choirs themselves. Who are these folks you’re making music with?
I have, you know, 60-year-old people in choir who were told in elementary school that they don't have a good voice. And here they are, finally, years later, getting up enough courage to sing, all because that one person said they shouldn't or they put them in the back row. That's damaging to people for the rest of their lives. I started a campaign when I started with the St. Louis County chorus in 2016. I created this mantra, “It's time you started singing again.” And that's our logo for everything. We put that on all of our auditions, and we see that the vast majority of people coming to us are people who have not sung in a while, whether that's older people who used to sing in church choir or something like that, or otherwise. We’ve got a lot of 30 year olds coming who had really great experiences in high school and college, and then they stopped singing. I would say probably half of our new membership is from that vein, where people just realize that they need to have music in their life again.
What’s something most people don’t know about their community choruses?
I think that St. Louis has a really vibrant choral scene. There's a choir for everyone. I mean, no matter what you're looking for or your ability level, there seems to be a new choir or two starting every year. So if people look hard enough, they can find places to sing…I think people just, especially now, need an escape. I believe in the energy that people bring to the room. I know that because I have to have a ridiculous amount of it to leave a rehearsal. But I think everyone has this energy that they have to do something with, whether it's negative energy or positive energy. We take on burdens, we take on problems—our own problems, our family's problems, our parents' problems, our kids' problems. We take on all these burdens, and they have to come out somehow. People have to do something. Some people play golf. Some people collect something or make something or produce something. I think singing is a big part of that. You can come in and join and sing. I just think people are drawn to an escape. And I think music sort of provides that. I also think that it's nostalgic. I was talking to someone the other day about antiques and when we see something that reminds us of either a parent or a grandparent. And I just want it all. I want all those things that bring back those good memories, and for so many people, music is part of those good memories. And so they want to be a part of it. I really take that into consideration when I'm programming music. The music is not just entertaining for the audience, but it's fulfilling for the singers as well. I'm more concerned with the singers’ experiences with the music and the audience's reaction to the music than I am doing the biggest and most difficult thing….I think I do a pretty good job of knowing my singers, knowing what they want, knowing their ability level, and planning a concert to fit that. I think that's why we're seeing such exceptional growth is because the people are coming to the concerts, and they want to be a part of it.
There's of course value in beautiful technical work. There's also value in things that are special because of how they make people feel. Music can, of course, be a very personal thing for people.
Yes, and the magic is when those two meet. If you've sung with me for a year and you're not a better musician, if you don't read music better, if you haven't met people, if you haven't grown, more connected to the community, then I've done something wrong. The magic is finding a balance between all that, where people can grow as a musician, but still have a bunch of fun…it's a balancing act.
You have your own upcoming Christmas concert at the Sheldon. Talk to me a little about this performance, Notes from Home.
The Sheldon has had this series for many years. Pretty regularly, almost every week on Tuesday nights, they invite local performers to perform on their series.I did The Sheldon pretty much exclusively for about 10 years. Then, in 2018 and 2019, I did it at the Botanical Gardens, in conjunction with the Garden Glow. So people would come to my concert, and then we would all go to the glow together…but I just love The Sheldon. I did two things for them during the pandemic livestreams, and the people there are so committed to St. Louis and to artists and giving artists a leg up. I'm really grateful for the Notes from Home series. There was a time back when I'd have 20-30 people there, and 15-20 of them were my family. To get to do that now with hundreds of people every year is a blessing.
What can people expect from this performance? Can you give us any hints about the programming?
It's pretty varied. I'm focusing this one a little bit more on the piano, and I'm joined by three of the best of the best in St. Louis as my band. It’s a lot of my own arrangements of standards. Think Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, that kind of thing is what I'm going for this year. I've got piano, bass, drums, guitar, and my friends will be joining me. I've got a few friends who always sing some duets with me. My dad is a singer as well. I grew up in a pretty musical house, and my dad always had bands and plays guitar. So every year my dad and I do a song together, which is really special to me. That's always really fun. I try to feature local people as much as I can. I’ll have anywhere from two to five guests, local theater talent, friends, and other musicians. I'm also actually chair-elect of the board at Epworth Children and Family Services, which provides housing and education and emergency shelter and street outreach. We serve 12,000-15,000 individuals a year, and a portion of the proceeds from the concert will go to Epworth.
Wow, where do you find the time?
I don't get exhausted until I tell somebody about it. [With the end of the Collinsville Chorale,] I'm excited to have a little bit more time over here to work as the chair of [Epworth] and just continue to build the St. Louis County chorus. We've got great ideas for the chorus moving forward: starting a smaller chorus, collaborating with other artists, doing more concerts. So it's a really exciting time for them too, as we start to think about what's next for us coming out of the pandemic. We're at the point now where we're ready to kind of go to the next level. I think it's going to be better than it was before the pandemic. I think people appreciate it more now. I know the singers that I have a relationship with that I talk to were struggling during the pandemic, just because they weren't able to make music. You can't have a choir by yourself.
What’s it been like coming back together as things opened up again?
There's this piece by a wonderful composer and a dear friend, Joseph Martin, called “The Awakening.” It basically just talks about a dream. The first part is this sort of minor-sounding dream, and it's a dream where there's no music. “No song of love/no lullaby/and no choir sang to change the world/no pipers played/no dancers twirled/ a silent dream.” And then there's this huge awake section, and the chorus is “Awake, my soul, and sing/the time for praise has come/the silence of the night has passed/a new day has begun/let music never die in me!” They're just incredible words. So when we came back in the fall after being off for a year and a half, we had done the piece a couple of years ago, so enough people knew it. We just came in, we all had masks on, and we passed out that piece. That was the first thing we did. No talking, no welcome, no instructions. We just passed out that piece. And the first thing we did was sing this incredible, moving song that ends with, “Let music live!” That's the last three words of it. People really, really missed it. And I think they appreciate having it more now than they did before. It's definitely a priority and not just an extra thing. Attendance is so much better. People show up, they commit, they sell tickets. If there’s one good thing that came out of [the pandemic], it’s that people are really a little bit more grateful now for the music we get to make together.
What do you most want people to know about you or about your work?
I'm all about connection. One of the biggest compliments that I get from my friends is that I'm always introducing people. I know what it feels like when I'm with my group of friends, the closeness that I feel, the safety, the camaraderie and the help and the support. And I just want that for everyone. I've just been lucky enough that I'm able to create musical communities that do that. So I would want people to see how important my work is. I think I would want them to know that it's an honor for me to have such wonderful moments with these singers…if there is something that I can do to connect help or assistance, or to make someone have a better life, that's what I hope to do, whether that's through the programs we offer at church, or the programs and outreach that we do at Epworth, or through our work with the chorus.
Earlier this year, I was sort of having these thoughts like, You know, we have 150 people coming every week. We have to do something with this amount of people. So we decided, very last minute, to do this thing called Season of Giving. We donated 25 boxes of food to my church's food pantry. And there’s an organization called Greater St. Louis Honor Flight. One of our singers is very active in that group. It's $600 for an honor flight, and we decided to try to pay for two of them. We ended up collecting $3,200. And then, one of our members is the development director at Youth in Need, so we collected just carloads full of diapers and personal hygiene products. People just inherently want to help and give back. So I would say that's what I want people to know. I want to make people’s lives better, whether that's forgetting about their stuff and singing or the joy of connecting people. There's so many great choirs and great directors. I mean, there's a choir if you're gay, there's a choir if you're older, there's a choir for everyone. There's bands for everyone. There's all these organizations. I hope people see that I do genuinely care about their being connected with other humans. Um, especially after the pandemic when we weren't able to be connected. I think it's so important to connect people.
