McBride, 71, directs the Coastside Chorale in which Miles sings first soprano and where the two met as singers 30 years ago.
That's not their only link: McBride was the Half Moon Bay High School special education resource teacher for 21 years and started a program there for developmentally delayed students in 2000; Miles, 79, was secretary to the Half Moon Bay High counseling staff starting in the early 1960s.
 Joan McBride, left, Coastside Chorale director, and June Miles, 50-year chorale member, look at music for the chorale's upcoming concert. |
"It's always meaningful, especially in this age when people are moving so much, to have continuity," said McBride. "The fact that I have known (Miles) through music and school makes it doubly precious."
In addition to shared histories and immediate family members (including granddaughters) who sing, the two will chime together for real when the Coastside Chorale presents its Spring Concert Saturday, June 2.
This concert will mark many milestones. It commemorates the chorale's 50th anniversary, includes selections from "West Side Story" which debuted 50 years ago this year, and will salute Miles and her 80th birthday June 1.
"I account a lot of (the chorale's) continuity, esprit de corps, and just loyalty, to June," said McBride.
Besides "West Side Story," the chorale's 30 singers ages 13 to 90 will perform patriotic selections and madrigals from 16th-century French pieces to contemporary ones including the lighthearted "Minute Madrigal" and "Mouse Madrigal" by American composers.
They will sing the spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and there will be individual solos. They will render songs with water themes, like "Shenandoah," a contemporary Hebrew piece and the lyrically poetic "Sand Castle."
The chorale is accompanied by pianist Michaele Benedict, whose son, Nonda Trimis, is married to McBride's daughter, KrisAnn.
It all takes place at 7:30 p.m. at the Coastside Lutheran Church at 900 N. Cabrillo Highway. Admission is $10 general admission and $7 for students and seniors. It will be followed by a reception.
But for these two women, the music began long ago.
Miles's earliest musical memories go back to childhood in Santa Margarita, Calif., her father who played fiddle, her mother who played piano and a sister with whom she played the family piano until it burned in a house fire.
Her family lived in a railroad town, on the "Y" where the engines turned around. Her parents warned her to stay away from the tracks.
"So, of course, where did I go? The tracks," she laughed, showing the scar on one knee where she fell on the rails when she was 10.
"I have sung my entire life," she said. "I remember my parents saying, 'June, sing for Auntie Edna.' I can remember walking up the street and just singing away."
She joined school glee clubs and church choirs, "in any capacity I could," and choirs and choral groups after college. "It was just part of life," she said. "That's me."
McBride began singing at 11, and "used to pretend I was an opera singer, standing up on my back porch on a stool."
In middle school she was a coloratura and cheerleader - until a voice teacher made her quit cheerleading. She's grateful now for the sake of her voice. She majored in music education and voice at Millikin University in Illinois, and came to Half Moon Bay High in the 1970s.
Miles and husband Joseph opened a gas station in Moss Beach in 1957. "I pumped gas, changed tires, changed oil, just about everything," she said. "In those days, we washed and polished cars for people" too.
But as her four children were growing up, she realized she needed something more. When she learned her minister had started a choir, she was interested.
And when she heard of a mixed (men and women) choral group through the Coastside adult education program, she jumped in, though she never trained as a singer. That was the early chorale.
"I didn't realize that after 50 years" the chorale would still be a big part of her life, she said.
She can name chorale directors over the years: William MacSems, Carol Roeder, Sylvia Lee, Rebecca Offenbach, Richard Styles, Kay Raney to McBride.
She led a May 1988 effort to combine the local and Bay Area chorales for a concert and still treasures her T-shirt from that concert along with her CD collection of "all styles" of music.
Through her career and musical avocation, her husband and children were supportive, she said. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1975. She said it took years to find equilibrium and "to be me," but she did - singing all the way.
"If it were not for the Coastside Chorale, I would have to find something (musical)," she said. "I have to have something."
The chorale was that something for her - and the community. "I want it to be a real Coastside deal," McBride said. "I want it to involve as many facets of music on the coast as it possibly can."
Miles agreed the ensemble has a niche on the coast. "Our group has lent a lot in the way of music to the community," she said. "People seem to enjoy it a lot."
And she enjoys them. "The people in the group are wonderful people," she said. "You can't help but enjoy music if you're with people who enjoy it."
For information on the Coastside Chorale, call McBride at 726-9266.
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