July 5, 2000
Europe choir festival repeat performance
Local woman returns to Wales competition to cheer on daughter
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Proving to herself in a concrete way that life sometimes comes full circle, Ann Hackett will be heading back to Wales and Europe on a singing tour. Only this time, she will be chaperoning while her daughter, Molly, does the singing in the Llangollen International Music Festival, along with fellow members of the Traverse City West High School Chorale.
Hackett last traveled to Europe in 1969 with the choir from her all-girls high school in Providence, Rhode Island. They competed in the Llangollen festival and a small ensemble from the school garnered third in the youth choir competition, the highest foreign placing. From Wales, her 22-member group embarked on a five-week concert tour of Europe, including stops in Paris, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Stockholm and Copenhagen.
In the intervening 31 years since her trip, marriage, a teaching career and raising three daughters have been Hackett's priorities and she never made it back to the British Isles or Europe. She did not even dream of going again.
"I thought that my trip was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and here I am going again," said Hackett, past president of the Traverse City Music Boosters. "Never did I think I would see it all again. It will be really exciting to share this with Molly."
Yesterday, the excitement began as members of the West High School Chorale and their 12 chaperones departed from Cherry Capital Airport on their two-week adventure. Led by Russ Larimer, the school's choral director, the students will take their show on the road after their coveted Llangollen appearance, singing in London and Paris.
This is the first time that a chorale from Traverse City has taken their act international, so it is fitting that Larimer invited some members from the Central High School Chorale to come along and help round out their sound.
For Molly Hackett and the rest of the Chorale, this trip is the chance of a lifetime.
"It's nice to see how music can come around like this and bring people back to the same places 30 years later," said Molly Hackett, who graduated from West High School in June. "Both my parents are going and it will be neat to see the places my mom went."
While following in her mother's footsteps is nice, Molly and her friends will be spared one of the details of her mother's trip: the polyester, A-line red dresses with red, white and blue patriotic scarves as an accessory.
"We looked like airline stewardesses," Hackett recalled.
Members of the West High School Chorale will also probably not have a chance to see the Rolling Stones giving a free concert in London's Hyde Park, as Hackett and her friends did that summer. (Well, sort of; the swarms of people kept them at a distance but they heard the music.)
Hackett also treasures the memory of the night in Switzerland when she and her friends took a night cruise on Lake Lucerne. They all gazed in awe at the beautiful moon shining that night, its light reflected in the lake's gentle waves. That was the night that Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, a night etched in her memory forever.
"When we got back to the hotel, you would have thought that we were the ones who had landed on the moon," Hackett said. "There was red, white and blue everywhere and people congratulated us and we all celebrated with champagne."
While in Wales this summer, she plans to look up the host family she stayed with 31 years ago. She also is curious to see the town that she remembers as having a sleepy, slow-paced life.
"Llangollen was really a rural town then," said Hackett, who remembers that her group notified their families of the Llangollen victory with a telegram. "I have no idea of what it looks like now."