Dr. Larry Zehring became director of the Bella Vista Women’s Chorus in the Fall of 1984. He and his family had moved to Rogers from Kansas City, MO just a few months earlier, intending to pursue a life of genteel semi-retirement after years of teaching vocal and choral music in high school and college, and performing with the “Grammy” Award-winning Gregg Smith Singers.  Larry is a PhD in vocal music performance, choral conducting and musicology.

He describes what happened next in academic terms: “I flunked ‘Retirement 101.’  I found that I couldn’t just walk away from doing what I loved.”  So he registered as a substitute teacher with Rogers Public Schools and took a part-time job as music director for the First Christian Church there. That led to the formation of a volunteer community chorus which eventually morphed into the Northwest Arkansas Chorale. Several of the singers were also members of the Bella Vista Women’s Chorus. “When the Women’s Chorus needed a new director, they ganged up on me and insisted that I apply for the job,” he says. “It was kinda like I was Ado Annie in ‘Oklahoma,’ I couldn’t say no.’”

Under Larry’s direction, our Women’s Chorus has performed throughout Northwest Arkansas and traveled as far afield as Washington, DC, San Antonio, TX and Natchez, MS Little Rock, Tulsa, Kansas City and St. Louis. The repertoire ranges from popular songs, show tunes, folk songs and spiritual arrangements to classics like Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols,” Gustav Holst’s “Hymns from the Rig Veda” and Johannes Brahms’ “Four Songs for Women’s Voices, two Horns and Harp,” Op. 17.

Larry and his wife, Annette, who is organist and director of music at St. Theodore’s Episcopal Church in Bella Vista, now live as “empty nesters” in Bentonville, having moved from Rogers in 2007. He is still routinely and resolutely failing Retirement 101, not only as director of the Women’s Chorus, but also as director of music ministries for the First United Methodist Church of Bella Vista.

Dr. Larry Zehring