Want to feel better? Take a cue from these women and sing a little more

Last year Rzepus Hartley’s partner, Ross, died. They first met when they were both members of the same choir. Today, she doesn’t sing alone — she’s one of 40 members of Hamilton’s Duet Club, the longest-standing women’s musical group in the country, founded in the city in 1889 by one Ellen Ambrose, a music teacher, to encourage her students who were too shy to perform solo.

“This is a place to come and socialize,” says Rzepus Hartley, still dressed in her orange vest and carrying a stop sign in her hand. Blending her voice with other older women for two hours once a week has been a balm.

“It’s hard to sing and worry at the same time,” she says.

Indeed, there’s oodles of research to show just how good singing is for us, especially when done communally. It unites us not only with each other, but maybe even with some aspect of the divine. It has the power to keep us in the present moment, transport us to the past, make heartbreak more bearable and lift us out of the mundane.

Consider the results of the world’s first randomized controlled trial on community singing with depressed older adults: The year-long study, by the Sidney de Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health at Canterbury University, found that 60 per cent of participants had markedly less mental health distress a year after joining a singing group.

Maybe that’s why these women, members of the Duet Club’s Women of Song, who range in age from their 40s to their 90s, gathered here at Melrose on this Wednesday morning, look so joyful. At the moment they are practising “Three Little Maids” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, “The Mikado” (“Three little maids from school are we/Pert as a schoolgirl well can be/Filled to the brim with girlish glee/Three little maids from school”).

Girlish glee indeed.

They are led by their brilliant and beloved artistic director, Dawn Martens, a Governor General’s Award winner for her work as a teacher with the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board’s Buchanan Park Opera Club, which she led 25 years. She rouses this roomful of Women of Song members with her characteristic combination of Ethel Merman-like ferocious confidence and Lucille Ball-like goofy humour, stomping her foot in playful appreciation when the group gets things right and gently suggesting a do-over here and there when things falter.

The women are in full preparatory mode for their 135th annual spring “Harmony in the Hammer” concert taking place Sunday, April 28, at 2:30 p.m. at Melrose, practising a repertoire that includes everything from Hildegard von Bingen’s sacred choruses to Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand.”

You’d be right to note the emphasis on female artists on the playbill. Martens notes many women composers have been traditionally overlooked in music history, pointing, for example, to Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna Mozart, who was just as talented as her famous brother, but was forbidden by her father to continue writing music (in favour of getting married) and had to help finance her brother’s tours by giving piano lessons.

The women in the Duet Club tend to be the type who are overlooked in our society as well, since many of them are at a later stage in life when they disappear from the public discourse, when their voices and their wisdom aren’t given the credit that’s deserved.

“People have certain expectations when they see a bunch of older women putting on a concert. We’re going to show them because these women are fantastic,” says Martens, a glint of defiance in her eyes.

She notes that one of the more challenging pieces she’s looking forward to conducting during the concert is Puccini’s “Musetta’s Waltz” from “La Bohème,” sung in Italian of course, about a woman who projects her sensuality to try to reclaim the attractions of a former lover.

“We refuse to be invisible — these women are drawing on their vast life experience when they sing these songs,” says Martens.

Janice Young, 78, a former president of the club, first joined 30 years ago when she hired a babysitter so she could get out of the house. She says the sense of community she’s experienced has been a comfort as she ages.

“Some of these women are getting older and their lives aren’t always easy, especially if they are dealing with health issues,” she says. “I know my day will come when I’ll experience the same thing and I’ll come here with a heavy heart but I know these women will be here.”

Of course, things have changed immeasurably for female members since the club was founded. For one thing, they can vote. For another, most now keep their own names, at least their given ones. Looking back at old photos of club members most were identified by both their husband’s last and first names, losing their own identities to history. They used to meet in what was known at Melrose as “the ladies parlour.” Back in the day, everyone wore hats and few women had a job outside the house.

Yet the purpose of the club remains constant: women singing together, having fun and doing good. To that end, in addition to two annual concerts, there’s a bus trip planned to see “My Fair Lady” at the Shaw Festival in May, scholarships that are granted for young musicians, as well as the annual Ellen Ambrose High Tea in honour of the club’s founder.

A fear of singing badly and looking foolish stops a lot of us from engaging in one of life’s most enjoyable pursuits. That’s a shame because singing makes us feel better in just about every way, boosting feel-good chemicals in our brain and melting our troubles like lemon drops.

While most of the members of Women of Song can read music, not all do.

“There’s an assumption that people who don’t read music aren’t musically inclined. There’s no need to be intimated by the dots on the page,” says Martens, who reminds us that some of the most engaging musical performers in the world, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift among them, can’t read music.

Women of Song is eager to accept new members. No audition necessary.

As for the current members, they strike me as determined types who will be singing right up until the end.