It's hard to explain the satisfaction that comes from being in a group of singers. The MeadowSingers of the Carolina Meadows Retirement Community know the feeling and are happy for the opportunity to sing each week under the direction of Judy Morris.

   For them, the fact that they please audiences at their two concerts each season is frosting on the cake because the real treat is getting together once a week for 90 minutes of singing music that lifts their hearts.

   "This is a different kind of music than I've ever sung before," said Doris Bowles, who has been a MeadowSinger since soon after moving to Carolina Meadows four years ago.

   Bowles sang in church choirs all her life, but this chorus sings popular music and some classical music.

   "It's fun learning this kind of music," she said.

   Water is the theme of the spring concert that the MeadowSingers will present at 3 p.m. on Saturday at the Chapel Hill Senior Center and again at Carolina Meadows at 4 p.m. on May 7. Songs will be sung, played on piano and harmonica and poems will be read -- all based on water, including selections from "Show Boat," "South Pacific," selections from Handel's Water Music and favorites like "The Water is Wide," "Moonlight Bay" and "Swanee River" exemplify the kinds of music that will be performed.

   During a rehearsal last week, the women were about to rehearse "Bali Ha'i" from the musical "South Pacific" when Bowles asked if they could stand.

   "It's the only way I can reach those notes," Bowles said, moving to stand where she wouldn't block anybody who chose not to stand. There are maybe a half dozen folks who aren't able to stand while they sing but are quite comfortable sitting on the front row while others stand behind them.

   The women began, "Most people live on a lonely island . . ." and Morris stopped them.

   It sounded like she said, "Just give it a little pat," and then she started them again. Whatever those guiding words had been, the women had gotten what they needed to sing the line and the entire song evenly, smoothly and on pitch. The women did a superb job of sounding dreamy while singing in unison.

   The next song was an ensemble for the men, also from "South Pacific," and they pounced on their "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame" like the lonely, longing men the song was written for, sounding for all the world like men contending with mangoes and bananas rather than a real, "girly, womanly, female feminine dame."

   "I come in here tired and go home invigorated, joyful," Morris said after the rehearsal. "They make me feel positive."

   The blend has been positive all the way around since Morris began directing about five years ago. When Morris came on board, she provided the means for Barbara Walburn to keep both hands on the piano. Walburn had directed and accompanied for two years.

   "I spent many more hours as a director than as an accompanist," Walburn said. "As we age, our voices drop in range. (Three of the women are now tenors). It's hard to choose music that challenges yet is within their reach. I don't have the training for choral conducting."

   Morris came equipped with plenty of training. She received a master's degree in choral conducting from Indiana University after earning a bachelor's in music from the University of California at Berkley. For 23 years she and her husband, Glenn, have lived in Chapel Hill. She taught at Culbreth Middle School and Durham Academy and has sung in the Durham Choral Society since 1986. She also conducts the choir at the Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill.

   But the folks at Carolina Meadows have gotten to her.

   "It's just so much fun," Morris said, a wide smile spread across her face. "People really care."

   The folks who sing cared enough to raise the money to make the acoustics in the retirement community auditorium more musically accommodating. The carpeted stage dulled the sound before it reached the audience, so they raised several thousand dollars to have hardwood flooring installed. That was after raising the money for the Steinway grand that accompanies them.

   Of the 12 chorus members who started in 1989 under the leadership of Jane Ragland, five remain -- Jim and Verna Jean Mason, Dave and Peggy Wharton and Jack Roper.

   Every week Morris is amazed in some way by the pluck and perseverance of the group as some arrive in their walkers and some in wheelchairs. One man comes equipped with oxygen, a good many wear hearing aids, and as is the case in any choir with members over 40, almost all wear eye glasses. Two members are in their 90s and the roster of 42 members fluctuates as members die and new people move in.

   But as with Sue Wilson, impairment for these folks simply means overcoming a challenge. During rehearsal, Wilson sang without sheet music, her lips clearly mouthing the words.

   "I'm legally blind," she said. "I tape it and listen to it over and over. I love to sing. I've been singing my whole life -- since sixth grade."

   Any listeners who are hearing impaired should look for Wilson in the choir (the only one without music) and read her lips. The music is perfectly clear through her words.

   "I've sung all my life," Herb Bailey said, "when I'm driving my car or in the shower."

   Bailey and his wife, Betty, are in the chorus for the second year. Neither has had much experience with structured singing, although he sang for a year in glee clubs in high school and in college. Betty, he said, had been more involved with dancing.

   "There are some very good singers," Bailey said. "Some of the singers who are quite experienced singers still don't know how to read music."

   Bailey himself knows how to follow the notes up and down but can't name every note or find them on the piano.

   "Judy is wonderful," Bailey said of their director. "She's a very good musician. Her whole attitude is tolerant but with discipline.

   "I wear glasses and hearing aids. I do the best I can and she really tolerates that very well. She wants us to pay attention but she's very pleasant. I've never seen her lose her temper -- which she's had cause to."

   Bailey said that among the men there are some jokers who sometimes don't know when to stop.

   "We're more like nursery school students in a way," he said, laughing. "She's remarkable. She smiles all the time."

   Maybe the smile comes from doing what she has always wanted to do. Born in New York City, Morris grew up in Menloe Park, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1945, her maternal grandfather, Richard Crooks, whose voice was referred to as the most attractive among the American tenors of his generation, retired from a career as an opera singer. He became popular during hundreds of broadcasts of "The Voice of Firestone," a 30-minute program that started as a radio show in 1928 with a 46-piece orchestra and celebrated vocalists and was simulcast on television from 1949-63.

   "He retired the year I was born," Morris said. "I never saw him perform on stage. He was still a wonderful singer but he couldn't sustain an operatic career."

   She heard him sing plenty, however, and after she had progressed on the piano, she accompanied him.

   "We were surrounded by his friends in opera," and she threw out names like Lauritz Melchior and Rose Bampton -- a tenor and soprano of the same era as her grandfather. She said that each year at the family's Christmas party, she would play as he sang "O Holy Night."

   "He sang into his early 70s," Morris said.

   A photograph of the great singer with his granddaughter playing the grand piano that now sits in her living room, hangs on the wall next to the 1929 Steinway.

   Because she plays piano and because she sings with choruses, Morris knows the trials for all associated with a choral production and appreciates the hard work from all.

   "There are a number of good, trained voices and others who love to sing," Morris said. "Barbara Walburn works so hard and is the backbone of the group. They're there because they care in a lot of ways. I really do love it. It's terrific to work with these people."

   But what Morris knows and appreciates most is the music. Because she knows it so well and knows the work required to make it good, she gets what she needs from her singers.

   As the chorus began rehearsing "Shenandoah," they sang the first two words, "Oh Shenandoah" and she stopped them.

   "What's the first sound?" she asked. "Ah, oh, ooh?"

   And they answered her, "Oh."

   "Oh. Let me hear it," Morris said intently and they began again, this time with a perfectly crisp "O" coming forth.

   In the end, after all the rehearsing and preparing, it is the music that comes through, moving through the throats and out into the space where it is savored and enjoyed by the audience.

   "She says, 'You can do it,' and we do it," Bowles said. "It takes a special person to work with a group like us. Sometimes we surprise ourselves."

   "I know they'll come through," Morris said of the chorus. She knows the rooms where they perform will provide as well. "The audiences are very supportive."

   The concert on Saturday is a fund-raiser for the Chapel Hill Senior Center with tickets costing $7. The concert at Carolina Meadows is free.

   Contact:
   Michelle Westrom
   Marketing Director
   (919) 370 - 7160