This Tucson chorus has a new name but the same love of singing

On Friday, April 22, the group will reintroduce itself with its “Unforgotten Festival” concert, a program that the group was supposed to perform at a festival in Spain in June 2020 that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The highlight of the concert will be “As We Sing Live,” a new song the chorus commissioned from Tucson poet Lollie Butler and Missouri composer Mark Hayes.

Longtime Arizona Women’s Chorus Director Terrie Ashbaugh said she commissioned the work from Hayes, who is best known for his church choir compositions. She reached out to Butler, who she knows, and sent her the music with a request that she write a poem that summed up her choir’s desire to continue singing throughout the pandemic.

Ashbaugh said she held hybrid pandemic-era rehearsals where some of the women were with her rehearsing outdoors in her cul-de-sac while others participated through Zoom, which was streaming from a tablet that she set up in the middle of the group.

“When COVID hit, a lot of choirs in town stopped meeting,” said Ashbaugh, recounting how 26 of her choir members were ready to pay full tuition even though the rehearsals for months were hybrid — a system that she has continued even after everything has reopened.

“I have people who may be out of town or sick and I still have the tablet in the middle of the rehearsal room and they still sing live,” she said. “Singers have this innate need to continue to sing. These women have this tenacity; we’re going to keep going. We’re going to continue to sing.”

The 70-plus member Arizona Women’s Chorus, whose name change was related to its nonprofit tax status, has been performing in Tucson since it launched in 1981 as the Foothills Women’s Chorus.

Ashbaugh took over as conductor in 1998, and under her leadership, the ensemble has performed in Carnegie Hall and at the 75th annual WWII Wreath Laying Ceremony in Normandy, France.

Friday’s concert begins at 7 p.m. at Catalina Foothills Church, 2150 E. Orange Grove Road. Tickets are $20 at the door or online at AZWomenschorus.org.

Other upcoming events include appearing in the University of Arizona Treble Glee concert May 1 that also will feature the Tucson Women’s Chorus; and a Mother’s Day concert May 8 at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.