by Richard Gray
Over the past few months, we have been featuring brief bios of St. John’s staff singers. Now we want to give you the chance to get to know the wonderful volunteer singers in our talented choir! Today we’d like to introduce you to our Soprano section.
In a choir, the voices are divided into sections based on vocal range (how high or low someone sings). Soprano is the highest voice part and often carries the melody or the top line of the harmony.
For each of the four sections, music can often be split 1st or 2nd. The 1st part usually sings the higher and maybe more prominent line, while the 2nd part sings notes slightly lower that support the harmony. This creates a more rich and full sound.
Jo Anna Hebberger has sung with us in the first soprano section for about 5 years now. She is married to Dave who is a retired weed scientist and she is a retired plant ecologist. Free time activities include knitting, sewing, weaving, pottery, hiking, gardening, native plants, drawing and some painting, and she and Dave want to build a canoe. Jo Anna was born in Missouri but grew up in many different places, east coast to west coast, north to south and spoils herself with dark chocolate.
Jill Thompson sings in the first soprano section and has for 40 years. Her husband is John Thompson. He has also been singing in the choir for 40 years. They began “dating” in 1998 and were married at St John’s in March 2009. She’s retired. In retirement she’s serving on boards and doing what she can to support organizations that “do good”. She cares about children getting a good start in school, and is a firm believer in exposing kids to the arts, especially music. For fun she loves singing, playing cards, especially bridge, walking outdoors, bicycling, buying and taking care of hanging baskets on our deck, filling our birdfeeder, accumulating (too many) clothes and mixing and matching clothing items she’s had for years and years. Jill loves manicures and pedicures, Duolingo (currently German), Secret Cat Forest, baguette and lots of (preferably Irish) butter, with a good dry wine, online Mexican train dominoes with high school friends. She’s originally from Worthington, Ohio, which is 5 miles north of The Ohio State University and was baptized and confirmed in the oldest Episcopal Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. She loved the choir and youth group there.
This is Melissa Porter’s second year of singing second soprano. She is single, with a life partner, Jerry. They each have two kids who range in age from 27-31. They recently adopted a rescue dog who is named Addie. She is a mix of cocker spaniel, cattle dog, and a bunch of other things too. She is very sweet but also a little strong willed! She works full time plus in the IS technology area of Ramsey County. Melissa loves to be out and about sometimes with people and sometimes in the peace and quiet of nature with few people. She loves to knit, cook and bake, garden, and loves jigsaw puzzles. Currently she’s been visiting National Parks around the US and she does like to travel. She loves fine wine and fine chocolate and grew up in Chelmsford, MA, near the border of NH. She spent a lot of time in NYC and the Hudson River Valley.
Nancy Wellington sings in our second soprano section and has belonged to the choir since 2004 when she asked Jim Frazier if she could sing just for All Saints Evensong. She’s been married to husband David for 55+ years. They have two adult children and their families live in Pittsburgh where she and David are originally from. Since the age of 10 she has been a church organist and is currently the organist at St. Mary’s RC in Stillwater. Nancy is a retired choir director, music teacher, accompanist, and Spanish teacher. Her current interests and activities include delivering for Meals on Wheels, bobbin lace making, hiking and traveling. Among other languages she has studied, she’s currently learning Polish. Her guilty pleasures include doing the NY Times puzzles, and computer jigsaw puzzles, but she doesn’t feel guilty about it! She grew up in Lancaster, Wisconsin.
Becca Hovsepian has recently joined the choir and sings in our second soprano section. She lives on the east side of Saint Paul with two corky corgis. She is a project manager that runs commercial lighting projects for an electrical wholesale distributor. She sings in the Vocal Essence Chorus, and other coral projects. Her guilty pleasures are cooking and running with friends. Originally she grew up in Minneapolis.
Allison Brown‘s family is small but mighty: her sister, Sarah, and brother-in-law, Drew, live in San Antonio, Texas! She also lives with Larkspur, her loyal McNabb Shepherd. By day, She works as a project manager for healthcare tech marketers. VERY thrilling! As she often says, her day job pays for her vocation: art. But when she’s not sewing, knitting, painting, or volunteering for committees, she also loves to cook through her cookbook collection, birdwatch, watch tons of history documentaries, treat herself to a night at the orchestra, or go to museums! Her guilty pleasure focuses on video games… mostly because she will stay up way too late to finish them. Although she was raised in small-town central Indiana, with a lot of summers in northern Arizona. But home really is Minnesota, through and through!