Ellen Robinson's Chorus: "Anything Goes!"

By Betsy Bannerman

Ellen Robinson, longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister, conducts the Anything Goes Chorus in our Music category. Hearty congrats on the start of your 26th season, Ellen!

Vocalist, composer, musician, Choral Director, Educator, Ellen Robinson has been surrounded by music all her life. "My parents gave me piano lessons when I was six," she recalls, "but I decided I would rather be outside climbing trees." At age nine she discovered there was a piano in the living room (of course it had been there all along) and she was suddenly "hungry to learn." She also taught herself guitar at age 11, sang in her high school chorus, earned music degrees in college back East, and as a young adult in Oakland organized an Andrew-Sisters-type trio called The Spoolie Sisters. When she first sang in this group without accompanying herself on guitar or piano, "I knew then that I had found my instrument." She has since sung with Natural Attraction (rock 'n' roll band), The Robin Flower Bluegrass Band, and toured nationally with Vocolot (women's a cappella ensemble).

She is currently a successful jazz vocalist with a CD entitled "On my Way to You." A second CD called "Mercy! Ellen Robinson Live" was released in May 2006. Jazz Improvisation Magazine declared Ellen Robinson to be "blessed with great pipes" and Melanie Berzon program director of KCSM raved, "Her enthusiasm and love of the music is infectious. Her willingness to bare her soul through each song is courageous, a ride through the joy, pain, celebration of life."

So— there is Ellen Robinson, performer, but there is also Ellen Robinson, Music Educator (going on 35 years and thousands of students).

She gives private voice lessons to individual students, teaches Master Classes in Solo Singing, and has been the Choral Director for a number of Bay Area groups. Currently she directs Swingshift Singers (women's chorus), Girlfriendz (women's octet) and Treble Makers (women's quartet). In addition, 25 years ago she founded and continues to direct two community singing groups for men and women, called The Anything Goes Chorus, in San Francisco and Oakland.

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Anything Goes Chorus (AGC), Robinson conducted both groups in a rousing and heartwarming concert this past March. The program romped through jazz, pop, Broadway, folk, oldies, spirituals and world music, with the usual entertaining props and choreography that are characteristic of the AGC shows.

Robinson started The Anything Goes Chorus in 1981 "because I had been teaching children for about ten years and wanted to offer the same supportive learning environment for adults that children are exposed to all the time." The first AGC classes were held wherever they could get space, including people's homes. Judith Heimer was a member of AGC for 23 years ("Had I known it was an era, I would have paid more attention!" she laughs.) She remembers the classes were "small and had a support-group feel about them, and of course were lots of fun. We always had dessert, too!" The first AGC productions occurred in the mid-'80s.

Robinson says that instructing a chorus (typically there are 25-30 students per group) is rewarding, but can also be challenging ("because there are so many different levels of singers in the same group"). She originally began teaching because it was so difficult to pay the bills as a performing musician, but she soon realized that both performing and teaching were her gifts. "When I'm teaching, I'm performing and when I'm performing I'm teaching," she says. "They feed each other."

For example, the wide repertoire of The Anything Goes Chorus (including jazz, pop, Broadway, folk, world music,) reflects Robinson's own varied musical history (folk singer, musicals, rock & roll, Vocolot, jazz career).

When she realized that 25 years of AGC had gone by, she says, "I wanted to throw myself and the choruses a huge party! This has been the longest job —much less relationship— I've ever had!" She feels extremely blessed to have been able to make her living all these years doing exclusively what she loves— music. Having found her own unique voice, she passes it on by helping others to discover theirs. "I love teaching," she says; "the students raise me up every day."