Eighteen songs, all sharing the theme of time, were sung by the Kamsack Community Choir or by a solo, trio or quartet of choir members during a concert at Westminster Memorial United Church in Kamsack on June 25.
Entitled The Time of Your Life, the concert marked the last time that Marilyn Marsh would be playing the piano accompaniment for the choir, and the announcement that she and her husband James would be leaving for Winnipeg in September resulted in a tearful farewell.
With his relaxed, humorous style that he had exhibited in previous concerts, Scott Sears returned to the mic as the emcee for the concert.
“Well, how time flies,” Sears said at the beginning of the concert. “Once upon a time there was a group of people who wanted to sing together and so they formed a community choir, and they called themselves the Kamsack Community Choir.
“They thought about changing the name one time but no one could come up with a name they all liked,” Sears said. “They started with Sandy Nykolaishen playing the accompaniment for them but soon Marilyn Marsh took over and nine years later here we are. Susan Bear has been the choir director this whole time.
“You see how hard it is to tell a story without using the word ‘time’. If you could count how many times a day you say it, you might be surprised. After all, it’s time to get up in the morning. What time is it anyway? I’d better hurry if I want to be on time. It’s time for a coffee break, lunchtime, time to go home, tea time. I don’t have time to pick that up for you; report card time, bedtime, wasting time, time is money. And those are just a small number of the ways we talk about time.
“Tonight the choir is going to take the time to present to you songs about time. We hope you have a good time.
“Our first song tells us that in life there is a time for everything. This song was written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and became an international hit when the American Folk Rock band, the Byrds, released it in 1965, when it became a plea for world peace. The lyrics, except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines, are adapted almost word-for-word from the English version of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes.”
The entire choir sang Turn, Turn, Turn.
“This year is the 50th anniversary of the release of the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album by the Beatles,” Sears said. “How time flies. One of the songs on that album talks about growing old together. Of course, when they wrote the song, 64 was a long way off and they must have figured you were pretty old when you got to be that age. When Paul McCartney turned 64 his children recorded a special version for him. Our trio (Susan Bear, Zennovia Duch and Kathie Galye) will now sing When I’m 64 for you and, coincidentally, Zennovia will be turning 64 this year.
“When we talk about saving time, we usually mean trying to do things in a way that makes the task go quicker. In our next song, saving time actually means trying to preserve it, to hang on to a time that you don’t want to lose. Time In A Bottle was written by singer-songwriter Jim Croce who penned it after his wife Ingrid told him she was pregnant with their son, Adrian, in December 1970. It was released on an album in 1972 but became a hit single after Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash in 1973.”
The choir sang Time In A Bottle.
“We all know how important it is to be on time, especially for your own wedding. Our next song is about a 1956 bachelor party, where the groom, or in this case, our brides, want to make sure the merriment doesn’t stop them from getting to their wedding on time. From the musical, My Fair Lady here is the trio performing Get Me To The Church On Time.
“Our kids grow up way too fast. It is exciting to watch them grow but at the same time you wish they would be little for much longer. The song Turn Around was first released by Harry Belafonte in 1959 and reflects on how the time passes so quickly when your children are growing.”
The choir sang Turn Around.
“Nostalgia (is) a wistful affection for a time in the past. Recounting fun times we had with family and friends seems to form a large part of social conversations. Tonight, we have four friends who are recalling a carefree time in their lives when they had a lot of fun together. Gene Raskin put a new English lyric to a Russian romance song and Mary Hopkins made it a hit in 1968. Our quartet (Zennovia Duch, Susan Bear, Kathie Galye and John Adamyk) will now sing Those Were the Days.
“When we reflect on the past we also have to remember that not all was good. There have been too many wars, too much conflict. But we can look to the future in the hope that we can do things better. In the 1971 song by John Lennon, he gives us his vision of the things that have caused rifts between people and what a world would be like if we got rid of those things. There is a memorial to John Lennon in Central Park called Strawberry Fields and it contains a mosaic that reads Imagine.
“Our choir will now Imagine a better future for all of us.
“Souvenirs are things that are kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event from times past. But the memories that they bring back are not always happy ones if the person you are remembering broke your heart. We go further back in time now, to 1927 to a song written by Edgar Leslie and Horatio Nichols that was a Number 1 hit for Paul Whiteman and was subsequently recorded by many artists.
“Here is the choir with Among My Souvenirs. Put your hand up if you need a Kleenex.
“Time after Time, a popular saying and a popular song title as we have it twice tonight. Our first Time After Time is the Number 1 hit from 1984 by Cyndi Lauper, who co-wrote the song with Rob Hyman. It was her first Number 1 hit in the USA and was written during a time when they were both having relationship difficulties. Here is Susan Bear singing Time After Time.”
After a short intermission, when juice, iced tea and coffee were available with trays of dainties, Sears said that in 1965 the Beatles released a song called In My Life, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, which was a generalized meditation on John Lennon’s first 25 years of lifetime.
“Our trio will now perform this song for you.
“Our next song in another one by the Beatles, also released in 1965. It is a melancholy ballad about the breakup of a relationship. Just think, if musicians were never in bad relationships, where would a lot of their inspiration come from? Paul McCartney is said to have composed the whole song in a dream and then hurriedly wrote it down once he woke up. At first he didn’t believe that it could be original but after asking a lot of people, they assured him there was no other song like it. The song? Yesterday. Here is the choir.
“You might not be familiar with this next song but like the song Imagine it looks to the future for hope. But the hope this time comes from seeing the beauty and constancy around us in the present and ignoring our follies. Here is our trio with Hope For The Future.
“Now this song you willbe familiar with. It was written in 1931 but became famous in 1942 when part of it was sung by the character, Sam, in the movie, Casablanca. It has since become the representative song of Warner Brothers. The choir brings you As Time Goes By.
“How many minutes are there in a year? You are about to find out in this song from the Broadway musical Rent. The lyrics ask what the proper way is to quantify the value of a year in human life. The composer, Jonathon Larson, died before the preview opening of the show and so the cast sang it at the beginning to pay their respect to him. Our trio presents Seasons of Love.
“There aren’t that many catastrophes whose dates of occurrence you can recall. But we all remember 9/11. The song, Only Time was released in 2000 by the Irish singer-songwriter Enya. She then did a remix of the song after 9/11 and donated all the earnings to funds to help the families of firefighters involved. Here is the choir with Only Time.
“The last song by our trio tonight was first released by Andrea Bocelli in 1995. He released it again in 1996 as a duet with Sarah Brightman and it became the best selling single in history in Germany. The trio will now present Time to Say Goodbye.
“The last song on our program is the second Time After Time tonight. This one goes way back to 1946. It is a jazz standard written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne and was introduced by Frank Sinatra in the movie It Happened in Brooklyn. And what a great theme for our choir! Here they are with Time After Time.”
After a standing ovation, the choir agreed to perform one more selection.
“As you might have heard, our pianist, Marilyn Marsh is leaving us to move to Winnipeg in September,” Sears said. “We would like to thank Marilyn for all the good years together and to express how much fun and joy we have had with the choir.”
The choir closed the concert by singing I’ve Had the Time of My Life.
