Adirondack Community Chorus installs music collection at Lyons Falls Library

LYONS FALLS — The Lyons Falls Library celebrated the installation of a comprehensive music collection on Aug. 9 with a ribbon cutting ceremony and community sing.

The collection consists of nearly 50 years’ worth of music still being performed by the Adirondack Community Chorus and now also available for borrowing by other community choral groups, schools, church choirs or any other groups who might want to perform in their own venues or other locations such as area hospitals or nursing homes.

Jan Yauger began organizing and caring for what was initially a small collection of music when she was a member of the Boonville Baptist Church choir, and future ACC Director Peg Nuspliger was the choir director. In 1976, Ms. Nuspliger was invited by the Dodge Pratt Northam Art and Community Center to rehearse a chorus to sing with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Jeannette Nellenback, then Boonville Baptist Church organist, was the rehearsal accompanist for the newly formed chorus of 74 singers; and she suggested that the singers stay together to form a community chorus.

“That was essentially the beginning of the Adirondack Community Chorus,” Nuspliger said. “Many of the original Boonville Baptist Church choir members and the Philharmonic group have continued to perform with us to this day.”

The newly formed community chorus went on to perform Christmas and Easter choral arrangements and cantatas, with Biblical narration compiled by Nuspliger, in partnership with other churches. Besides continuing to take care of the music, Yauger sang soprano in the Baptist Church choir and the Adirondack Community Chorus since the first notes rang out to an audience.

Along with the ACC performance schedule, the music collection “just mushroomed,” Yauger said. When the collection outgrew its storage space at the Boonville Baptist Church, she took it home, where her son-in-law, Bill Busler, eventually built a room full of shelves to keep up with its expansion.

Today the ACC Music Library contains multiple copies of major works for Christmas and Easter, as well as requiems, country & western hits, show music, pop music from each decade, brass ensembles and piano music. There are approximately 280 different choral octavos and over 60 different major works or pop music collections, all housed on new shelves in the community room at the Lyons Falls Library, built and installed by ACC member and frequent soloist Don Mallette.

Though Mallette modestly describes them as “nothing fancy,” the shelves rise as high as 8 feet; and they were assembled and moved into the library in sections, in order to fit through the doors of the historic building.

“We moved the entire music collection in a day,” Nuspliger said. “We used three trucks and four SUVs.”

Nuspliger, Lyons Falls Library trustees Elaine Place and Judy Bentley, ACC Board of Directors Secretary Terry Marcy and chorus members Don Mallette, Steve Kennison, Miyako Schanley and Maureen and Angus Saunders did the moving and re-installation.

Nancy Williams Grisham of Maryland, who sings with the chorus in the summers when she visits the North Country, donated the labels for the shelves.

“We are so pleased to welcome the ACC Music Library into our daily operations here at the library,” Lyons Falls Library Director Megan Honey said. “We will act as a liaison for the chorus, and with no cost to the borrowing patron, this should prove to be an invaluable resource for local music educators, church organizations, singers and musicians of all kinds.”

“We’re very fortunate to have had so many volunteers to help with the moving and cataloging,” Nuspliger added. “We hope this will enable more folks to share our music, so future generations of musicians and audiences can enjoy it for years to come.”

Anyone who wishes to borrow music from the library should call Honey at the library at 315-348-6180 and she will put them in touch with Nuspliger.

Johnson Newspapers 7.1

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