Longtime Haines musician and teacher Nancy Nash is gifting the Chilkat Valley a birthday present, to celebrate making it to the 75-year mark.
The program is called September Song and features 16 songs and four musicians, two pianists and two vocalists.
“It’s a big undertaking,” Nash said a few days before the concert. “I have to admit, I’ve been a little tense.”
Nash, a multi-instrumentalist, has taught piano and done vocal coaching privately for nearly 50 years. She said the idea to give a birthday concert was one she had been considering for some time.
She and her husband Dwight Nash tend to do something grand to celebrate significant birthdays.
“We hiked the Chilkoot Trail for Dwight’s 60th [birthday],” she said. “For my 50th, we went to Chicago because there was an organist that I had been around that I wanted to hear. Dwight’s 80th, we did that train trip last summer where we went all across the northern United States from Seattle to Wisconsin,” she said.
Still, she’s not sure she would have done a concert alone. But that’s where Haines soprano Crystal Miller comes into the picture.
The two met when Miller moved to town in 2020 and contacted Nash for vocal coaching – which is essentially Nash accompanying and supporting Miller as they work through pieces together.
“I’m always trying to meet pianists because you need to have an accompanist to do a lot of the music I like to do,” said Miller. “Nancy is kind of known as the best around.”
Miller said she had been thinking of giving a local recital since she moved to town and the two decided to combine their ideas.
The music in the program is varied, a mix of classical and contemporary pieces which is perhaps not surprising given that both Miller and Nash described each other as women with huge stashes of sheet music.
Miller, who moved to the Chilkat Valley in 2020, said she is particularly happy to perform “Bird Upon the Tree” from the musical Juno.
She said the song, a whimsical two-voice piece, reminds her of what happens when a community comes together after a disaster.
“It’s about a little bird caught in its nest and, you know, it gets caught in a storm. At the end of all of it, it’s the storm that frees the bird,” she said. “It’s just kind of a nice song about overcoming adversity.”
On the more technical end, she’s looking forward to performing The Monk and His Cat, a song by Samuel Barber. The piece features some interesting rhythms between the vocalist and pianist.
“It’s really tricky to get the vocal part and the piano part lined up together,” Miller said. “But when it works, it works so well and it’s just so fun.”
Miller will be joined on some of her vocal duets with former Haines resident Cashy Pashigian while Lucinda Boyce, who studied piano with Nash, will play on a four-hand sonata by Mozart.
Nash will be playing on the Chilkat Center’s renowned Steinway Model B grand piano, that was gifted by Jean-Paul Billaud, a French-born pianist who she took lessons with in the mid-1970s in Juneau.
September Song is on September 7th at 7 p.m. at the Chilkat Center for the Arts. A reception in the Chilkat Center lobby will follow the program.
Editor’s note: Nancy Nash copy edits the Chilkat Valley News’ print edition each week.