WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG

Mary Ann “Maisy” Wambaugh BennettClass of 1944Singing Her PraisesMaisy (left) and friends with Seiji Ozawa, then musicdirector of the Boston Symphony Orchestra“Ididn’t think of myself as someone whowould be singing forever,” said Mary Ann“Maisy” Wambaugh Bennett ’44. “I’ve nevereven had any formal voice training. I wasplanning to be a music teacher.”In reality, Bennett’s career as a musicteacher was short and unsatisfying, whereas hersinging talents have carried her through thepast six decades—from her student days atConcord Academy and Vassar to the BostonSymphony’s summer home at Tanglewood,Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the capitals ofEurope and the Far East.“Music has always been part of my life,”said Bennett, who was a piano major in college,an apprentice teaching elementary music atShady Hill School in Cambridge, then ateacher in an after-school program in Boston’sSouth End, which she described as disastrous.“I was supposed to be using all the wonderfulteaching techniques that Shady Hill hadgiven me to teach the kids circle games andfolk songs,” she said. “Well, forget it! Theywould come bounding into the building full ofexcess energy and climb all over the pianowhile I was trying to play it. I had no controlover them at all. Eventually, I was reassigned asa playground aide.”Bennett left professional life to raise fourchildren with her late husband Hank in theBoston suburbs. She sang with severalchoruses, including a local group that in the1960s came under the leadership of a newdirector: “a very young John Oliver.” Oliverwould soon be tapped by the BostonSymphony Orchestra (BSO) to form a chorus.He brought along several chorus members,including Bennett.Maisy (right) with choral colleague Julie Steinhilber“Because there were many groups in theBoston area that already sang with the BSO inthe winter season, the Tanglewood FestivalChorus was originally intended to perform onlyin the summer at Tanglewood. But in fact, ourfirst concert was in Boston in April of 1969 dueto a change in programming,” she recalled.“Leonard Bernstein conducted us in a performanceof Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The crowdwas wild to see Bernstein, who hadn’t been toBoston in a very long time. The applause calledhim back to the stage eight times! I thought Ihad died and gone to heaven.”That same summer, Bennett started performingat Tanglewood. Her first concert therewas under the direction of Seiji Ozawa, whomBennett had never heard of at that point. Shewould spend the next four decades performingwith him. “Back when I started with the Tangle -wood Festival Chorus, there were about seventyto eighty singers and everybody was part ofevery choral performance, of which there wereup to five per summer,” she said. “Now it’sTony Mazzoladifferent; there are about 250 choral members,and you’re selected only for some programs andnot others.” Bennett joined the chorus whenthe youngest of her four children was twelve.“My husband was wonderful about it,” she said.“For a weekend concert, you had to be out inthe Berkshires by midweek for rehearsals. In theearly days, we stayed at Miss Hall’s School inPittsfield; these days performers stay all overthe area. My husband would come up for oneweekend performance each summer.”Bennett performed with the TanglewoodFestival Chorus for thirty-seven years; she retiredjust last summer. “It was a very large commitmentof time, energy, and money, but therewards have been extraordinary in many ways,”she said. “The chorus has performed numeroustimes in Carnegie Hall, but also in Canada,England, Scotland, France, Germany, andSwitzerland. In 1994, Seiji Ozawa led a Far Easttour in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Osaka. Itamazes me to think that I’ve sung not onlyunder the direction of Seiji Ozawa, but also withover twenty other conductors, including ColinDavis, Robert Shaw, and Bernard Haitink, whotook us on the chorus’s first European tour. Italso seems incredible that I’ve performed withwell-known soloists such as Jessye Norman,Renée Fleming, and José Van Dam.”Bennett sings now with her church choir inLincoln, Massachusetts. She plays tennis, readsin a Shakespeare group, volunteers for a localsenior citizen program, and sees her children andgrandchildren as much as possible. “For manyyears I couldn’t imagine retiring,” she said. “Ikept postponing it and postponing it. I couldn’tpicture who I would be if I wasn’t singing withthe Tanglewood Chorus.“Being part of that group and all it entailshas largely defined my identity for almost halfmy life.”11WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG SPRING 2008