OCR Text |
Show Page A6 Thursday, March 10, 1998 Park Record Mary Ellen Wharton is Park City's own by HEIDI WEST Record staff writer i. When Mary Ellen Wharton's voice pierces the silence of an expectant ex-pectant church audience, its lilting beauty sends chills up a listener's spine. It's no wonder, you might say. After all, she has been singing publically since she began touring with a trio at the tender age of three. All that practice must make perfect. But Wharton has the gift of a lovely lyric soprano voice, and she has developed it through years of training. This 10-year resident of Park City has to her credit 11 years with the Utah Chorale and Utah Oratorial Society, as well as six with Pro Musica. She recently gave up both the Chorale and the Oratorio to concentrate on her favorite songsters, Pro Musica. "It's a much smaller group," she says, "and I like the music they do the short works of the masters." It is also led by her music teacher, John Marlowe Neilson a founder and director of all three groups. "He's a marvelous teacher," she says. "He knows how to explain ex-plain to you what you should be doing. He'll say to me 'now what have you just done? Explain to me how you feel.' He is able to get out of people a kind of music that you've never heard before. Pro Musica has a sound I've never heard before in any chorus." Vharton comes from a very muscial family. Both parents were singers, and in fact did their own touring with a third vocalist as the Lynn County trio. Her father taught music in the town where she grew up Central City, Iowa, and, she says "all my aunts and uncles were music teachers." Her older brother, Paul, played the clarinet as did Mary Ellen herself. She also took up piano for a while. After graduating from high school, Wharton lived with an aunt and uncle in Chicago so she could study at the Chicago Conservatory. Con-servatory. She went on to attend Washburn University in Topeka, where she graduated with a major ma-jor in sociology and psychology and a minor in you guessed it.. .music. They're taking all TT 7TO Is! U a 1111 Our I. R. S. stands for: Ideal ffilestaurant Specials Come and enjoy your choice of six luncheon specials for $2.95 . Dinner Special-16 oz. T-bone steak $9.95 LIVE ENTERTAINMENT every Wed, Thurs, Fri, and Sat. nights in the KICdDCMIET LflDUMSIE HOTEL 649-2900 1895 Sidewinder Dr. located in Prospector Square "Move it. I love singing. It's been one of the funnest things I've done to go back and start taking voice lessons." She worked for five years as a secretary at the Menninger Foundation Foun-dation in Topeka before moving on to be the psychology department depart-ment secretary for the Child Research Council in Denver. She spent 10 years in Denver, and admits ad-mits to having a great time in that lively city. "Denver is really a fun place to be single," she says with a grin. Apart from dating a variety of doctors and professionals associated with the Council, she also traveled a great deal on her own. She fondly remembers a month in Fairbanks and Anchorage An-chorage visiting friends and seeing see-ing the countryside. "I guess I was having too good a time to get married," she laughs. Wharton did finally settle down and tie the knot with husband Jim at 28. Soon the couple was being transferred by the pipe company he still sells for first to Salt Lake City, then to Boise and finally final-ly back to Salt Lake City. "I spent the next IS years raising the family," fami-ly," she says. The Whartons have two sons Wade, who is 30, married mar-ried with two children in Salt Lake, and Kyle, 25 and living in Park City. F rom the time she had left school to take her first full-time job until she finished raising her sons to a self-reliant age, Wharton had let her music slide. Now, she returned to it with a vengence. "About IS years ago, I went back to studying voice," she says. She joined the Utah Chorale, and eventually began private lessons with Neilson. "I've been taking voice 'essons every week for the last 12 years," she says. 3lt .J your money, i I j - 1 1 : ill A t - 7 lAfMW& cdttJltt?S r, r if" V';' Mary Ellen Wharton "I love it. I love singing. It's one of the funnest things I've done is to go back and start taking voice lessons." She also joined the Utah Oratorical Society, and five years later Pro Musica. The traveling to and from Salt Lake and the grueling gruel-ing rehearsal schedule got to be too much, and she dropped the two to devote her time and attention atten-tion to Pro Musica a couple of years ago. Now, it's a twice a week three-hour three-hour rehearsal, three concerts a year schedule for her chorale singing. Wharton still performs a number of solos and sings with an "occasional" choir at her church, but she also holds down a job and finds time to travel with her husband. hus-band. For five years, she has worked as a salesperson for the local jewelry and gift store, Tommy Knockers. It's insightful to listen to her describe just what it is she gets from the job. "I love the people. The tourists are marvelous. They're here to play and have a good time, and they love to talk about where they're from. They're just delightful people." At the tail end of a fifth season of waiting on hoardes of tourists, this kind of cheery warmth is well, a little unusual for a Park City local. But, it's typical of Wharton. After much hemming and hawing, haw-ing, she finally realizes that it would be accurate to describe herself as someone who "loves people. I like to be with people," she says. Once it comes up, she chatters a list of other descrip- I1 t rt li ; W'klfMliM, Pr 1 yj; 7 I m I m 1 -mm. in 1 1 7 T A T - f ' . t .. . N , - ' J f S ' v ' t " : . ' jr i. , ' mm- - irrT r 1 nHninirm fi'i irn Mary Ellen Wharton exercises her lovely singing voice for an upcoming performance with Pro Muscia. tors. "I get my fuel from other people. I like doing things, and accomplishing things." She also is a goal-setter, she notes. "When I've attained my goals, then I'm through with it and go on to something else." Perhaps most revealing of all, Wharton says she "likes to be in the middle of things." For instance, take her commitment commit-ment to traveling. She and Jim have already seen much of the Orient and Europe, as well as a piece of Africa. Her clear, very blue eyes shine as she talks of the beauty of Tokyo and the animals in Kenya. She sighs when she says "it bothered me seeing the African children, with the disease and hunger and the way they live." The disease in particular was "horrible." When she visited a small African village, she remembers, the wife of the chief greeted her. "She took Jim in her, tent and sold him a 'genuine' lion's tooth that must have been a s'f fir s John Bayley Reggae Saturday March 12th His last performance of the season special songbird camel bone or something," she chuckles. Immediately somber-ing, somber-ing, she says, "Two weeks after we left, she was dead from malaria." But to Wharton, part of wanting to be in the middle of things means seeing all the people and cultures available to be seen, whatever that might mean. "I want to see the whole world," she says. "I'd like to meet everyone in the world, wouldn't you? I want to experience all the different people and different countries in the world." This enthusiasm is apparent in most of what Wharton does, but is maybe most apparent in her music. When asked whether 12 years isn't enough to have learned learn-ed all there is to learn about music, she shoots back, "You never stop studying, just like you. don't ever stop learning. You always have to perfect your skills as in anything you do." She pauses a moment, and casts her eyes downward. "I don't spend enough time with it my Borracho Y Loco Thursday March 1 0th 9 pm Caribbean Sounds Heidi West music," she says quietly. "I should be practicing an hour or two hours a day." Her "lack of devotion" is one of the reasons she is not a professional profes-sional soloist, she says. "Plus, I just don't have those skills." Anyone who has heard Mary Ellen Wharton grace an audience with a solo performance would vehemently disagree. But, a saying say-ing she remembers from her beloved father pulls it all together her humility, her drive, her goal setting, her enthusiasm. en-thusiasm. "My dad said 'never be completely com-pletely satisfied with what you do.'" Wharton isn't, and it sometimes leads her to seek the most difficult goal of all perfection. perfec-tion. But Wharton has help with that uphill battle. "I've always gone to church," she says. "I was raised in a Christian family. Probably the center of my life," she says, "has been my faith, my belief in God and my church. Friday March 1 1 th Body Motion All Male Dance Review 7:30 pm Ladies Only Gentlemen admitted at 9 pm Non Profit Motive from 9 p.m. it Park City Ski Area 649-3500 |