Schools

RHS Choral Director Retiring After 27 Years

David Saunders said he followed his passion to a career that spanned more than three decades.

When David Saunders walks out the door at for the last time on June 8, it will mark the end of a stellar career as the school’s choral director spanning nearly three full decades.

Not bad for someone who originally thought he wanted to be a band director.

“I’ve always considered myself an all-around musician,” Saunders said, as he contemplated his pending retirement. “But singing is what I do best.”

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As a band and choir member in high school, Saunders had already discovered his love for music. But when a local woman’s club grant allowed him to attend Purdue Band Camp between his junior and senior years in high school, he decided right then and there he wanted to be a band director.

“From my viewpoint, it looked like it had more organization to it,” Saunders said. “It looked like a more structured career path than choral director.”

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Looking to pursue a bachelor’s degree in music education at Illinois State University, he immediately became a member of the ISU Marching Band. But he also tried out for, and made, the ISU Concert Choir “and I realized, wow, this is what I really love to do," Saunders said.

"This is my passion.”

Of course in the late 1970s, passion did not necessarily put bread on the table, so he decided to cover all his bases by fulfilling the graduation requirements for two careers: one in instrumental music and one in vocal music, graduating in four years with 180 semester hours of credit, even though ISU grads needed only 120 hours.

Saunders’ eagerness earned him a job as a music teacher for fourth- through sixth-grade students, as well as seventh- and eighth-grade choir and high school choir director in the Earlville, Illinois, school system. But after a year there he moved on to a position as music theory class teacher, assistant band director and choir director at Thornton Fractional South High School for a year and then music appreciation class teacher, choir director and band director at Thornton High School for a year.

His real break came when he moved on to the Urbana school system, serving as a seventh-grade general music class teacher, assistant junior high choir director, assistant high school band director and high school choir director for four years while he pursued his master's in nusic education from the University of Illinois. That’s where he met Jay Hall, who eventually moved on to a job at RHS. When an opening came up at RHS, Hall told then-Principal Dave Carlson about Saunders.

“I was choir director for both RHS and when I started,” Saunders recalls. “I began my day at BHS and then came over here.”

That lasted three years before RHS became Saunders’ sole responsibility.

“Things were a little disorganized when I started but I was able to change that pretty quickly,” he said. “Like anything else, you need to have a beginning level, an intermediate level and advanced.”

Saunders, who has probably directed 40 or so high school musicals and countless vocal group performances in his career, admits he will miss the performances of his top groups, like the Madrigals, the most. But he has no regrets about retiring.

“The plan is to have no plan,” he said when asked what he’s going to do once he retires. “I’ll hang around the (Woodridge) house and do stuff. I’ll take the golf clubs out of mothballs. And my wife is planning some trips.”

 As for advice for his successor, Saunders says: “Stay calm. Kids don’t like being told what to do. Everything needs to be framed right. The big thing is to stay organized and be firm with expectations, and be very positive because kids respond to that."


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