Voices of the Valley becomes Columbus’ premiere children’s choir

Columbus is home to one of the fastest growing children’s choirs in the state. Voices of the Valley has grown from just 27 students to over 60 in three years. Its members range in age from 9 to 18, and this year they will travel to Europe for a cathedral tour of England.

Michelle Herring-Folta is the arts educator responsible for the choir’s unprecedented growth. Originally from Texas, Herring-Folta came to Columbus to work Columbus State University and direct Voices of the Valley. Now in their third season under the direction of Herring-Folta, the choir is set to give two performances of their holiday concert at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts this week.

Herring-Folta recently sat down with arts reporter Carrie Beth Wallace to discuss her background and journey to Columbus, why she loves directing Voices of the Valley, the group’s upcoming holiday concerts, and how they’re preparing to tackle Europe this summer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Let’s talk about your background. Where are you from?

A: I’m from Austin, Texas.

Q: Austin proper? Or just that area of Texas?

A: Nope. I was born and raised in central Austin. I actually taught at my middle school for my first job after graduating from the University of Texas.

Q: Did you really? That’s so neat.

A: Yes. I was there for eight years and I loved my job. I taught there before pursuing my post-graduate studies. My crowning achievement was that our school was threatened with closure — No Child Left Behind almost wiped out our entire school — and so even though our enrollment numbers were declining, our fine arts numbers were increasing. So I just off-handedly proposed that we become a fine arts academy. My fine arts director said, “Well, write me a proposal.” Four years later we became a fine arts academy and now the school is doing amazing things. They are going to Carnegie Hall this year, there’s a band going to Midwest. They’re just doing so well. I will never forget what happened there. I mean, they can never close that school. My mom went there, my brother and I went there. It is a special place.

It was hard to leave there to do my graduate and doctoral studies, but I still keep in touch. Everything is going great. But I wanted to change lives in a bigger way. Instead of just affecting the lives of my kids at my one school, I wanted to make better teachers. So that’s why I got a Ph.D.

Q: What an incredible story.

A: The kids are still my motivation. That’s why having Voices of the Valley in addition to my pedagogy classes at Columbus State University is like having my cake and eating it, too. I still get to work with kids, I still get to help make better teachers, and I’m still practicing my craft. I get to be relevant. My college students get to come in and watch me work with kids on a regular basis. They get to see me teach, and Voices of the Valley kind of serves as this lab choir for everything I’m doing in my methods courses.

Q: Wow. That is really neat. It must be so advantageous for your students on both sides.

A: It’s a really wonderful opportunity that doesn’t exist in many universities. It lets the children see what a rehearsal is like with an audience and it lets my college students see what it takes to run a rehearsal. I often say to my pedagogy students, “Remember when we talked about this yesterday? We are going to work on this at Voices of the Valley tonight so if you can, come see the rehearsal and watch how this works.”

It’s also great because when I have a bad rehearsal, I can go to my students and say, “OK that wasn’t great. Let me tell you what my thought process is and what I’m going to try next time to make it better.” Most of the time, my pedagogy students will say, “We didn’t even realize it was a bad rehearsal.” And that’s another great teaching moment because it tells them that we can’t let on when our teaching doesn’t go as planned. We don’t show it in the moment. But then I can say, “Next time, here’s what I’m going to do. Based on the data from this rehearsal, here’s the plan I’m making for next week.” And then we all get to learn together. I’m still working on my craft, and they get to see that. It’s really amazing for both the children and my college students. We all learn from each other.

Q: It sounds like you love what you do.

A: I wake up every day excited to go to work. I really do feel so blessed to get paid to do what I love. Every day. It’s awesome.

Q: So what brought you to Columbus?

A: Well, when I was doing my Ph.D. at North Texas, the graduate office I shared with a former professor from CSU. His name is Sean Powell. So when I started to look for jobs, Sean recommended Columbus to me. He said how much he had loved his time here and how wonderful the people are. He then connected me with the school and I came to interview.

When I came here, it felt like home. It really has a small town feel that I loved immediately. I also felt strongly that the pedagogy program combined with the Voices of the Valley children’s chorus provided a place where I could really use my skills to make a difference. I didn’t want to go into a program that was based in so much tradition that I couldn’t be anything but stagnant. While this program was certainly on well on its way, I felt like I wanted to take the reins from my predecessors and move forward in the paths they had created.

So I applied and came here to interview and everything just clicked. I waited with baited breath and one day while I was driving to a Dallas Symphony rehearsal, I got the call and was so excited to know we were headed to Columbus, Georgia.

My boyfriend at the time, Zach, who is now my husband, came with me to Columbus in August 2015. We began our journey here and haven’t looked back. We love it here.

Q: How was the transition when you arrived?

A: Well, when I got to Columbus and started at CSU, the program was in a bit of a transition. There was an interim person for a year before I came, so my juniors were on their third professor in three years. As you know from being a pedagogue, building trust and relationships are the keys to academic success. Needless to say, that first year I really tried to focus on the relationship building with my students while maintaining high expectations. I wanted them to know that I had just come out of the classroom, and I wanted them to be prepared with realistic expectations of what teaching really is like. My job is to give my students the critical thinking skills they need as educators, so I focused on communicating that and building relationships that first year.

The second year is always better. Everything was much smoother. I was able to begin a new tradition in town by starting the Middle School Choral Festival. It’s a partnership between CSU and the Muscogee County School District. My CSU students find a local choir and rehearse them and then the schools bring them to Legacy Hall for the festival. It’s already grown so much. Last year, we broke the fire code in Legacy Hall. So this year, we’re expanding it to two days.

Q: That’s wonderful. All of your students are lucky to have you. Now, let’s talk about Voices of the Valley. I have heard that when you came here, Voices of the Valley looked a little differently. Can you tell me a bit about that?

A: Ah, yes. Well, when I came here, I had a lot to learn about the history of the ensemble. It was originally started as the Columbus Boy Choir. Our chairman of our board was the founding director of Voices of the Valley and was so helpful in giving me the history of the group.

To my knowledge, a CSU staff member has always been the person who has directed Voices of the Valley. The largest I think it ever got was about 20 students. In the year between that and when I came here, attendance dropped dramatically. When I hosted the first open audition, only three students showed up.

Q: What? Only three? In 2015?

A: Yes. And I panicked. Here I was thinking that this was an established group! But little did I know about the power of the Columbus community.

The first thing I did was call Rick McKnight. He was the only person I knew at the time in Columbus. He was wonderful. He immediately called a meeting with the St. Thomas Choir members one night after a rehearsal. It was amazing, and something I will never forget. Here I was new in town, and there were all of these people ready and willing to help me. Each person was saying things like, “I can tap into this school.” And “I’ll call so-and-so.”

Within a week, I had 27 students signed up.

The most wonderful thing about that meeting, and I will never forget this as long as I live, was that there were two people in that meeting that had been in my original audition. I didn’t realize it, and it was like watching a movie when I sat there.

It was like a montage sitting there watching all of these people saying “We’ll help. I’ll help. I’ll help you.” All I could say was, “You all don’t even know me. I’m new in town and you’re all ready to take a huge chance on me? You don’t even know if I’m any good.” Then, two different people chimed in. “Actually, we do know. We were in your audition for this position and we know we can bet on you.”

It was so moving. All I could do was thank them. It taught me so much. They taught me that the power of believing in a person is really so powerful.

Q: So how did the first year go with Voices of the Valley?

A: We had a lot of growth. We had 27 students and I really had to completely revamp the sound of the ensemble. They sounded very much like children- in terms of the tone. I don’t know how else to describe it. The tone was not refined, the didn’t know the mechanism and process of breathing correctly, they didn’t know the parts of the voice. So I spent that first year really honing in on their tone and teaching the basics of what I needed them to know to move forward.

Q: Wonderful.

A: They have grown so much. Every semester, I would add in another component to challenge them. We started with simple literature, and then I would add in minor. Then, I introduced solfege and sight reading. It’s just gone from there. I am so proud of how they have grown. Their music literacy is so important to me. Not because I want them to be robots, but because it is very important to me that they understand the language of music.

Q: Where are they now?

A: As we went along, we doubled our numbers in the first semester. We went from 27 to 45. The next semester, last Fall, we went to over 50. Now, we have over 60 members. So what it tells me is that the community wants this. So I take my cues from that.

Q: What the ages represented in the group now?

A: Well, what they were before was ages 9-14. Now, I have expanded them to ages 9-18. I did this because I had some 14 year olds that said, “We don’t want to leave.” So I expanded it. We have students from Alabama and as far away as Augusta in the ensemble. Some of them don’t have choral ensembles or music classes that fit into their schedules at school, so I expanded the ages and now they are all still able to participate.

Q: What have you seen from this change?

A: What we have seen is that these older students become our leaders. They set the example and the pace for the younger ones, and the younger students look up to them.

Last year, I also expanded the group into two different choirs. There started to be a disjunct in the learning curve. I had so many students in such a large age group. I started to feel this disjunct and I was afraid that some of my kids were not getting the rigor that they needed. We now have Solo Voce, which is our advanced auditioned choir and then we have Bella Voce which is the entire group. We have 18 in Solo Voce. They are also still in Bella Voce. They make up our core of the larger group and it has made such a difference.

Q: Do you make these groups based on age? Or ability?

A: Always ability. Let the school systems break them into groups by age. I get to do it by ability and always will. Why shouldn’t a 9 year old be able to sing with 18 year olds if they can do it?

Q: Agreed. What is your goal for these ensembles?

A: I see us having three choirs at some point. Why not? The good thing is that when they go back to their schools, they are kicking butt and taking names. They have had all of this reinforcement of what their teachers are teaching them, and then they become the leaders in their choirs at school. It’s a win, win for everyone.

We are seeing large evidence of cyclical beneficiaries of this process. For example, we have one of our students who got accepted into the Visual Arts program at CSU. We also have students who participate in the Springer in their Academy. We have several students in “Newsies” right now at the Springer. We go and cheer them on.

Getting these kids involved in the arts is just helping our arts community to continue to grow and grow in a really beneficial way.

Q: I can absolutely see how that would be the case. What about your upcoming concerts? There are two in Legacy Hall this week, right?

A: Yes. We are giving two performances of a holiday concert entitled “Songs of Joy.” The concert is comprised of a variety of holiday songs that are grouped by theme. Each section of music will be introduced by poetry relating to the corresponding theme.

We will be singing some songs from our upcoming tour in England. We have been invited to tour this summer, and are currently raising money toward our trip. We are hosting two performances of the concert as well as a silent auction and dessert and pie auction before the second concert. All proceeds from the concert will go toward helping students go on our Europe trip.

It is a huge undertaking financially. As of right now, we only have 27 students who have committed financially. This is concerning to me because I want every child to be able to go. It is a life-changing experience for these children. So many of them would not normally be able to travel out of Georgia, let alone out of the country. I am hoping that our community steps up to help these children get to experience this opportunity. It really will benefit them and change their lives in such a wonderful way.

Q: What else would you like for our readers to know about Voices of the Valley?

A: We have an open door policy in our rehearsals. We often have parents in attendance or community members present. My parents were here last week from Texas.

I never wanted it to be a closed door rehearsal space. There are so many community choirs that are not open like that. I wanted everyone to be able to observe and learn and enjoy. By no means am I saying that I am the be all end all of pedagogy, but if there is something I can teach people observing, then I’d love to do that. And if there’s something I can learn from you, you’d better believe I’m going to take it and run with it.

You know? I just wanted this ensemble and the entire environment to be open. If we are not life long learners, we are doing a huge disservice to any craft that we choose.

I do believe that this England tour is important for these children, and I believe that we will get every child there. I am ever the optimist. This is a life-changing experience. And if we are not here to change lives, what are we doing? Competitions are great, and trophies are wonderful but they collect dust. An experience like this? It will change their lives forever. I know that the community will come through for our kids.

This story was originally published December 2, 2017 at 9:15 PM with the headline "Voices of the Valley becomes Columbus’ premiere children’s choir."