Ruth Townsend Musical Story

Here is Ruth Townsend’s musical story from age 5 for her children and grandchildren.

My interest in music starting very early in my family way back when on Sunday afternoons we always went for car drives and driving in the car. We sang with mom and dad singing harmony in the front seat.

My brother and I sang whatever in the backseat but life was full of music right from the beginning. When I was age five I started playing God Save the King by ear. My mother was quite taken aback and figured I better have piano lessons. So I started taking piano when I was seven years old and progressed through the Toronto conservatory to Grade Nine Piano and Grade One to Theory and Harmonics. 

I think it was when I was 10. I started working with my aunt on a radio broadcast. I often sang on that program. It was quite thrilling at such a young age to do that.

When I was practicing piano at home, I loved playing the Moonlight Sonata. It turned out that was my dad’s favorite song. So whenever I could if I wanted to get in good with my dad I’d be sure to play Moonlight Sonata. And it’s gratifying for me now to have two granddaughters that play Moonlight Sonata and their dad’s favorite too. 

So it’s gone through the generations and still has an important part in my mind and in my heart. 

Choirs

I was in the choir throughout Elementary school. I always enjoyed that and we were in competitions and that was quite exciting.

In high school, the choir was called the Glee Club. We did a lot of singing and we put on performances.

We did a few Gilbert and Sullivan numbers and in The Mikado I had the role of Catalonia which kind of was an old hag in which my son. I was pretty well cast but that that to us was quite an exciting adventure. 

Metropolitan United Church

Also when I was in high school I was part of the Metropolitan United Church Choir under a very well-known conductor. We practiced every week and then we sang every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening my father and brother at one time were in the choir at the same time.

I was a section leader in that group and also at the same time I conducted a junior choir at that church when I started teaching at Ealing Public School. 

I became a choir leader there. That was also the school that I’d gone to as a child but I was teaching there.

I wrote a song about Ealing public school that was my first effort at songwriting and I don’t know whether they still sing that or not, but it was fun to do that. 

At that same time, I was accompanying two or three other choirs in the community and spread the joy of music around.

Vancouver

I moved to Vancouver and taught at John Robson Elementary School in New Westminster had a Grade Five homeroom class and then taught Grade Five / Six / Seven Music.

It was quite challenging but also very interesting at the same time.

I joined the Vancouver Bach choir and found that a different experience because their music was very difficult compared to music I’d sung before.

I became a section leader in that choir as well.

After getting married and having my two sons, I was away from music for quite some time.

I didn’t really think about it because I was very busy. But then I did become organist choir leader at Mount Seymour United Church up on Berkeley in Blue Ridge.

So we had choir practices once a week and we sang on Sunday mornings in this small church. But I was working my way back into music.

And then I started working as a program director in Dogwood Lodge Intermediate Care Facility and my job there was planning programs to keep the residents happy and interested and booking acts and so on.

I also used my own music a lot when I was there. Once again it was fulfilling for me to be able to use my music to bring joy to other people. 

I became accompanist for the Kirby Singers a semi-professional singing group. We sang a lot at clubs and we did a bit of traveling. This was a mixed group and once again I learned a lot and developed my accompanying skills along with that group.

Gotta Lotta Nerve

After retirement, I became manager accompanist of a group called Gotta Lotta Nerve. This is a group of women that had been together for several years and now we’re still together after about 20 years. Started off with about 17 or 18 women and we now down to six. 

I’ve been part of the Gotta Lotta Nerve group now for about 20 years. We used to sing out a lot. We practice hard and were invited to sing at different events.

As the years have gone by everybody’s become busy and we’ve lost a few of our members because they’ve moved away. But we are now we are six of us that meet hopefully weekly and we meet in my Jazz Cellar. So they come in. Everybody is happy to see each other we get the big hugs and we catch up very quickly on what happened the week. 

Then we sing a few songs. We’ll be singing away and then somebody says well maybe it’s time to stop. So we do and we have a glass of wine and then we catch up on everybody’s life as well. So that group has become a very tight group of friends. Some of them have been friends much longer than those 20 years too. But is it even though we don’t go out and sing anymore. 

We enjoy singing and our friendships are deep.

The Mountaintop Children’s Chorus

My friend Roxy Giles and I formed a children’s choir which we called ourselves The Mountaintop Children’s Chorus and my granddaughter Jessica was part of that group and we were together for three years and did great things. Jessica when she was 13 and I wrote a song together for Pentecost for the church and that was printed out.

That was quite thrilling for Jessica and I to produce a song together. 

Parkgate Singers

I started the Parkgate Singers as a group of seniors in the community and even beyond the community who love to sing.

There was no requisite for auditions or whatever. We just had to love to sing.

We do a lot of singing at care facilities and within the community.

We have all become very good friends and we’ve all grown in our musical abilities and grown in friendships together.

We’re still together and we’re into our 11th year now and we now number just under 30 singers and hopefully, we’ll keep going for a few more years yet.

The Parkgate Singers started with someone expressing a need that there should be some group for people singing out in the North Shore. 

So we started with eight people. Four couples actually and it was fabulous fun.

We went out and sang at care facilities we weren’t very good.

Then the group grew with people joining.

I had one lady come and join. She said I decided “when I turned 80 I wanted to do something different”, so she loves singing and said she’d never do anything else.

It has brought a lot of joy to my singers, many of whom had never ever sung in a group before.

So they’re learning that part of it they’re learning the joy we bring to people when we go out and sing.

And just the satisfaction in their own souls.

There are many things written about how physically and mentally healthy music and singing together is.  And I just see that every week when I see them together. 

Our Canada

In 2014 the lieutenant governor of B.C. Judith Gibson sponsored a contest called Sing Me A Song and choirs of different ages or any choirs were invited to submit a song to which they’d written the lyrics and the music.

And it was to do with Canada’s hundred and fiftieth anniversary. The words were to do with the joy of living in Canada and the music to be appropriate.

So we worked very hard on a number and we worked very hard learning the number and then we did the video to send into Victoria. 

We were very thrilled about getting it off to Victoria and then much to our delight, we won our section.

Lieutenant Governor Judith Keyshawn did come to a party to present us with a trophy and a cash prize.

We used some of that cash prize to sponsor a day with different seniors choirs from the North Shore just to exemplify the joy of singing. Especially with seniors, but with anybody.

Victoria

Also the following February we were invited to Victoria to Government House to sing for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Canada flag. 

We had an audience of over 600 people. We figured that was our biggest audience we’d ever had.

That was very thrilling for us to be in Government House and taking part in that ceremony.

NRG (pronounced ‘energy’)

I entered a new stage of music in 2015 when I met Nick Bubaš invited me to sit in with his band.

Never done that before was pretty scary but anyway I did and then we formed a little jazz trio with Nick, Greg Dixon and me.

Hence the name of our jazz trio, NRG.

The miracle that develops with NRG is what we create music without even trying to think about it.

Somehow we just kind of tune into each other and we come out with the sound that we kind of figure is pretty good and it brings such pleasure. It’s quite an internal pleasure. We can perform for people and we like to perform well, but when I get from NRG is energy internally.

Fabulous First Friday Band

The Fabulous First Friday Band plays on the first Friday of every winter month for a seniors dance at the Parkgate Community Centre.

It’s very exciting to do our Fabulous First Friday band which at the moment the six of us play together regularly. 

That too is exciting when you get all the different instruments and we actually begin and end the song together and we try to do our very best and what I like about that is where we’re sharing our skills with others and you see the faces of the people when they’re out dancing. You see the faces of the people when they’re listening and the type of music we play too often stirs up memories for people. 

And I can almost see that as I’m sitting at the keyboard playing so the band is another wonderful experience and enriching my own joy of music.

Parkgate Summer BBQs

Also in the summertime, a group of four or six of us play at a noon barbecue at Parkgate, keeping our musical skills honed.

In 2019 my musical life includes weekly practices with Gotta Lotta Nerve and weekly practices with the Fabulous First Friday band.

We see practices of my part great singers and very in gigs and our monthly fabulous fresh party dance at Parkgate so my life continues to be full of music. 

Looking back I can’t imagine a life without music. 

It’s been a vital part of my life for all these years 

I was asked if I just come down here to my Jazz Cellar and play. I do come down to play to practice to make sure I’m maybe on board for the band stuff. Not as often as I would like to.

But I do come down and play for my own pleasure and then I always think I should do that more often. Sometimes playing some classical stuff.

Piano Collection

When I was in the Vancouver Bach Choir we had a sectional rehearsal at somebody’s house and she had two or three little miniature pianos there.

I thought “ooh” and in those days people collected things they collected salt and pepper shakers and they collected stuff. So I thought well I should collect pianos.

So I did start. That was before I was married even when I started collecting pianos.

Kind of lost count now but I probably have at least one hundred and fifty. It got to the point where I kind of got a bit tired of getting them for every Christmas and every birthday.

I haven’t been actively collecting for several years now but I still receive unusual ones now and then. 

So I do have my giant piano collection. Some of them have animals with them. Some of them are music boxes. Some of the banks. Some of them are really chintzy little plastic things. I even have a cigarette holder of a little grand piano.

So that has been a pleasure through all these years.

At one time I did keep a catalogue for a while and so for the first 15 or 20 years I was collecting, I would write down who had given me those pianos.

But even the ones I haven’t written down, I pretty well know where they came from. 

So this another musical part of my life. 

Looking back I can’t imagine a life without music. 

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