After more than a quarter-century as a central figure in choral music on Hawaii Island, Tom McAlexander is laying down his baton.
The 82-year-old McAlexander said he’s retiring because of a recurrence of cancer. He told the Tribune-Herald last week he’s responding well to immunotherapy.
And though he continued to conduct the Hilo Community Chorus after a successful surgery for pancreatic cancer a number of years back, his decision to retire while the novel coronavirus pandemic has put a halt to most live music events gives the chorus’ board an opportunity to find a successor.
“I regret the fact that he’s retired, because I was hoping to work with him for another 10 years,” said Walter Greenwood, the chorus’ accompanist for the past decade. “Tom did this all these years without any financial compensation. I got paid for playing the piano. If we got orchestra players or anybody else, they all got paid. Tom didn’t get a cent. He did it just because he loved to do it.”
McAlexander rose from humble roots as the youngest of eight children in an East Texas farm family to become a forensic document examiner for the FBI, CIA and Secret Service. During his career in government, he spent a quarter-century as a singer and frequent tenor soloist in the Metropolitan Chorus in suburban Washington, D.C.
After retirement, McAlexander and wife Emma moved to Volcano in 1994. In 1996, when Volcano Festival Chorus director Camille Almy stepped down due to health issues — she died later that year — she asked McAlexander to step into the role.
“At first, I said no,” McAlexander told the Tribune-Herald. “But Camille and I had a meeting to discuss the list of people who fit the job’s description — which was to know something about choral music, have time for the job, and to be willing to work without pay.
“It was a very short list, and there was only one name on it.”
The name, of course, was McAlexander’s. And although he reluctantly accepted the appointment to the position, he came to love conducting the chorus.
The Volcano Festival Chorus played two concerts a year, in May and a holiday-themed December show. Early on, they also added a service of lessons and carols on Christmas Eve at Kilauea Military Camp — a tradition started in 1918 at Christ College at Cambridge in England.
“We’d have nine lessons from the Bible, and then carols that would reflect what we were talking about,” McAlexander said. “Some of the carols would be sung by the congregation, and some would come from the actual concert that we had just done. It was in the chapel there at KMC, and it became so popular that, sometimes, it was standing room only.”
McAlexander continued to direct the Volcano chorus until 2011, even after assuming the volunteer directorship of the Hilo Community Chorus in 2005 at the behest of the late Ken Staton, longtime maestro at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
A Hilo Community Chorus tradition started by McAlexander is the “Messiah” sing-along — which was first held at Church of the Holy Cross. The event later moved to Christ Lutheran Church, where McAlexander directed the church choir, and finally to the First United Protestant Church, where it continued until the pandemic.
“Instead of having the chorus sing from the front, I had them sitting in the audience to serve as section leaders,” he said. “And the only people up front were the soloists. The soloists were all volunteers, and they were all either professional or semi-professional singers.”
According to McAlexander, he conceived the audience sing-along to a portion of the masterwork by George Fridiric Handel as musician Rick Mazurowski dedicated a new organ at Church of the Holy Cross.
“At the intermission, Bob Alder, the theater organist at the Palace, walked by,” McAlexander said. “And I said, ‘Hey, Bob, this would be a great place for a “Messiah” sing-along.’ He said, ‘Yeah, make it happen.’
“I never thought about me making it happen, but I talked about it with Rick, and we got together with the pastor there … and we decided we’d do that. And it was so popular, it became an annual event.”
Under McAlexander’s direction, the Hilo Community Chorus has also played both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, which started in January 2008 when they were invited to sing Sir Karl Jenkins’ “Requiem” as part of a larger choral group under the Distinguished Concerts International New York banner. The group now has what McAlexander described as a “golden ticket” — a standing invitation to appear whenever DCINY presents a combined chorus show.
Asked if he had a favorite concert, McAlexander hedged — as one might when asked to pick between children — but said one show in 2015 “might have been my favorite concert of all time in Hilo.”
“My chorus was made up mostly of people who have never sung in big choruses before. And some of them have never heard some of the great choral pieces,” he said. “So, I had a concert called ‘Old Chestnuts,’ where I picked out about 20 of my favorite pieces that every choral singer should sing once, at least, during their lifetime.”
As for a favorite choral piece, McAlexander replied, “There’s so many great pieces of music out there and so little time.” But he settled on one from the “Old Chestnuts” program, a 1950 work by the late American composer Randall Thompson titled “The Last Words of David.”
“His dynamics were just spot-on for what the music was saying,” McAlexander said, and added, “I never had a concert where I had music that I didn’t absolutely love. That’s the way I chose music.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.