Bill Eldon, one of our low, low basses, has been singing with the Long Beach Chorale for somewhere around ten years. He can’t remember exactly–probably because the time he’s spent diligently and strenuously hauling our risers and music stands all over creation has all blurred together. Bill is our Vice President and the head of our Performance Venue Realization team (formerly the Heavy Lifting Crew), and at times, has been its only laboring member. He’s a champ, through and through.
By day, Bill is a field claims trainer with the Bristol West division Farmers Insurance Group. In his off hours, he’s an avid rower who assists with learn-to-row lessons and both competes in and serves as a US Rowing Referee at local and not-so-local rowing events. “I came to rowing late in life as a parent volunteer for my son’s high school rowing program,” he explains. “The high point of my rowing career was competing in several events in the World Masters Rowing Championships in St. Catherines, Ontario in 2010 and coming away with a medal in one of my team boats, a mixed masters’ quad with two men and two women.” That’s good, Bill. You need those muscles to lug the risers, right? Wink, wink! Poor Bill. We’re looking for minions for him.
Bill at the June 2013 “Great Balls of Fire” Concert
Vocally, Bill has come a long way since his youth, when he sang as a soprano in fifth grade. He didn’t sing in a choir again until college, where he joined the chorus as well as a sixteen-voice chapel choir that performed Bach cantatas every semester. Later, he joined his church choir. It was in a local church choir that he met fellow Long Beach Chorale member Alan Caddick, who encouraged him to join us. “Before I joined the Chorale, I was asked to be part of a pick-up choir to help audition candidates for a new director and was thrilled both that they chose Eliza from the group and that she then accepted me into the Chorale, the first group I ever auditioned for,” Bill says. Sounds like it was all meant to be! Since then, he has recruited several more members of his church choir and, most recently, his wife, Beth, and son, Matthew, to the Chorale.
Bill’s favorite Long Beach Chorale performances have been the Brahms Requiem, the Bach Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat, and last year’s performances of Haydn’s Creation. “I love being in the group and making music with others. I am not a soloist or even a performer by nature, so the Chorale lets me be a part of great music. Singing under Eliza has also greatly improved my sight reading and my vocal skills in general,” Bill says. His favorite music to listen to is that of the Baroque period, especially Bach, but he also enjoys everything from the Middle Ages and Renaissance madrigals through They Might Be Giants, The Real McKenzies and anything in between. Just no Broadway or country, sorry!
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