Voices united

Facebook can make things happen quickly. When Erica Sallander of North Minneapolis learned that her former ninth-grade choir director, Judy Sagen, planned to retire last June and start a women's choir, it didn't take long for her to join.

A lot of other women felt the same. Word spread quickly through the social network, and by August, 110 women had formed the Minnesota Valley Women's Chorale.

"It's just been phenomenal," said Sallander, a former active choir member, who said her performing had become relegated to singing to Lady Gaga with her kids. "It's definitely big and beautiful and amazing."

The group, which started meeting Monday nights at Grace Lutheran Church in Apple Valley, brings together mothers and daughters, teachers and their former students. Sallander said it felt a bit surreal to walk into their first practice and see the familiar faces.

"It's really fun to see the students because they're all grown up with kids," said choir member Joni Anker of Eagan.

"Women together have a ball," said Sagen, the choir's director. "There's a special bond and camaraderie that's so obvious."

One woman feeds her new baby during rehearsals. Choir members announce engagements and other good news. "Those are the things that are so much fun to celebrate," said Sagen.

They performed a varied mix, dressed in black and wearing simple strings of pearls, from the Latin "O Aula Nobilis" to the rousing spiritual "Ain't I a Woman?" Sagen's own daughter, Amy Jo Cherner, also a choir director, directed "Cielito Lindo," a Mexican folk song.

"I think that's important for educational purposes to give them a variety of things," she said.

"She's an incredible motivator," Anker, now a speech instructor in the district, said of Sagen. "She really makes you excited about it. She has a very strong reputation statewide and nationally, too."

Sallander remembers Sagen from her high school years as being "just full of energy," she said.

"I swear her heels never hit the floor. She was good at making you feel like you were her only student, and she did that with thousands of students."

The group will take the holidays off and start practicing in January for an April performance.

Sagen said she arranged their practice schedule -- August through November and January through April -- in two segments because she wanted to give people breaks and give them something to anticipate.

"That was important to me," she said, "that it kept that excitement throughout the year."

Sagen said that her philosophy of teaching was always to make people enjoy singing and choir so that they would want to continue it throughout their lives.

"Now I've come full circle," she said.

"I'm so refreshed," she said before dashing off to get the women lined up to perform.