Saratoga News Photograph by George Sakkestad Music Appreciation Haneke finds developing an audience for his chamber-sized chorale is an ongoing challenge By Mary Ann Cook Anyone who's good at music is good at anything he or she undertakes. Children should be exposed to music on a regular basis as soon as they are born or even before. Music not only enhances one's life, but heightens and stimulates the mind. It's one of the few activities that exercises both right and left sides of the brain. Ergo, musicians traditionally have high IQs. These are all pronouncements of chorale director Don Haneke, who has been a music educator for 37 years, having taught at grade levels from junior high through community college, including a stint at San Jose State University for eight years. At SJSU he was glee club conductor and voice teacher, and he was conductor and musical director of the San Jose Symphonic Choir from 1979 to 1984. In addition, Haneke, who lives in the Saratoga hills, has been director of music ministry for various Methodist churches for 21 years. His choirs have performed with the San Jose Symphony and have toured Europe and the United States. "The way he conducts is so expressive it's beautiful," says Karen Hastings-Flegel, organist at Covenant Presbyterian Church and former student. "He feels the music so passionately. He has beautiful interpretations," she adds. Photograph by George Sakkestad Don Haneke rehearses with his choir. The Don Haneke Chorale puts on six performances a year. For several years Haneke worked as an investment counselor, and during this time his musical work was confined to leading church choirs. But this news needn't be surprising: "Music and math are very similar," he says. His wife, Jean, evidently agrees. She sings in the Don Haneke Chorale and is the controller at Oaktree Mazda. Five years ago, flush with a glowing church performance where his listeners gave him rave reviews, his wife, daughter and organist managed to convince him he ought to start his own chorale. His daughter is Diana Haneke Tomasi and besides singing in the chorale, she serves as its general manager. The organist cited was Karen Hastings-Flegel. "These three females persuaded me this is what I should be doing [on a full-time basis]," the curly-haired conductor says. So that summer he sent out letters to former students and colleagues and assembled a 30-member choir. The present number of the Don Haneke Chorale is 24. Auditions are ongoing. "I'm always looking for singers," he says. But these are busy people, these Don Haneke Chorale members and they are hard to--well--corral. They are at the top of their profession, Haneke says. "If you're good at music you're good at whatever you set out to do." For this reason, chorale members are often traveling on business, being transferred or forced to drop out because of the press of work. Continuity is hard to maintain. Flegel had to drop out because she had a baby and a part-time job. But here's what makes Haneke such an outstanding director, Flegel explains. "When you perform something like Renaissance music, you have to have rhythmic freedom, add your own expression musically. That's relatively easy to do with an individual, but it's very hard to get a whole choir to do. "But the imagery he comes up with in rehearsals is amazing. Drawing on his farm experiences, he says the music should be like swinging milk pails." His imagery evidently did the trick. The Don Haneke Chorale gives six concerts a year--fall, winter and spring--and takes the summer off. One concert each season is free to students and seniors. The same concert is presented a few weeks later to a paying audience. Finding a reasonably priced performance hall is one of the most difficult parts of his chorale duties, Haneke says. It is surpassed only by the challenges of developing an audience, very difficult for a small, chamber-sized group such as this. Members pay $150 yearly to belong to the chorale. And they participate in the Human Race, sponsored by the Volunteer Exchange of San Jose, where members can raise money for the group by soliciting pledges. The chorale practices at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto on Monday nights from 7 to 10 p.m. "I'm always recruiting. I always advise young men, 'Singing in a choir is the best way to meet women.' Choirs are much more social than instrumental groups. Of course that has its downside, too. They're harder to control, as well." Photograph by George Sakkestad Among the members of the choral group are (from left), Sharon Nelson; Haneke's wife, Jean; and Nancy Sleepe Haneke obviously follows his own advice: he met his second wife Jean when she was a singer in the First United Methodist Church choir that he directed. He is divorced from his first wife, also a musician, who lives in Tucson. "She could have been a world-class keyboardist," he laments. He characterizes himself as a hard worker, having held paying jobs from the advanced age of 4. He was the second youngest of 10 children raised by a widowed mother in the wheat-field country of Kansas. She was a church organist; his father died when he was 2. "When I was 4, I worked in a hotel with my brother, sweeping the floor, cleaning toilets, shoveling snow. And I've been working ever since." It's a method of child development he doesn't fault. "It paid off. All of my siblings have been successful at whatever they tackled." He took voice lessons at 14 and during his college years, he played in a dance band, principally wind instruments. His bachelor's degree is from Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan., and his master's is in music education from SJSU. He stresses the depth of his teaching and conducting. His singers read music, don't just sing by rote. "In singing you have to visualize the note in your head. It's a form of abstract thinking. That's why music and mathematics are so related. You should be able to hear it in your head. You should be able to hear what you see [printed on the musical score] and see what you hear," he says. He believes every child should have music lessons, preferably starting at age 4. "In Georgia they give newborns a Mozart tape before they leave the hospital. But most people are intimidated by music. We're not a music-singing culture. In Italy, in France you hear people singing spontaneously. But not here," he says. "Americans are evidently too self-conscious, too afraid to call attention to themselves," he conjectures. "And we don't go deep enough. We talk from our throat. We don't use our diaphragm in speaking; we don't breath deeply enough. And this translates into singing." Opera singers, on the other hand, know how to speak, to breathe, to sing, by going deeper. They don't need any amplification when they're on stage--unless they're outdoors, he adds. As for his own group, "We're a chamber choir that does difficult work," such as the upcoming concert, performing Bach pieces. One of the director's goals is to do Bach's Mass in B-Minor, one of the most difficult chorale works because of its polyphonic intricacies, its surprises. The chorale has produced several CDs and tapes. Its Brahms Requiem can be purchased at Tower Records under the Arkay Label. Other CDs available include Elijah by Mendelssohn, Hodie by Vaughan Williams and Four Sacred Pieces by Verdi. On tape are works by Kern and Hammerstein, Copland, South African spirituals, madrigals, art songs. For a Don Haneke Chorale fix via cassette or C.D., the number to call is 354-1185. The director also offers private voice lessons at Music Village in the Cambrian area of San Jose. Photograph by George Sakkestad Members of the Don Haneke Chorale rehearse under Haneke's direction. The next Haneke concert is Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m. at Christ the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1550 Meridian Ave., San Jose. It's free for seniors or students, with a $15 donation requested from others. On the program are Cantata and Motet III by Bach and Solemn Vespers by Mozart. The same program at $15 per person will be repeated Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. at the Los Altos United Methodist Church, 655 Magdalena Ave. Says Schola Cantorum's musical director Gregory Wait about the Don Haneke touch: "I've known Don for 30 years, and the first time I ever heard his singers perform was a high-school choir in Newport Beach. What was true then is true today: the incredible opulence of the sound he can produce. The quality of the sound is the hallmark of what he does. His priority is getting people en masse to sing well and beautifully together." [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 3, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.