Chamber choir to celebrate 25 years, honor founder.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

Twenty-five years ago, a younger version of Jim Miller pulled together the remnants of another musical group on the fringe of the University of Oregon School of Music to create the Eugene Chamber Singers.

For the next 20 years, it was Miller's energy, drive, inspiration and ideas that kept the Chamber Singers singing. Almost all their performances were and are of small-group choral music from the 16th to 20th centuries.

Now, five years after his retirement, the group is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday at St. Mary Episcopal Church, on the corner of 13th Avenue and Pearl Street. Admission is by a donation of up to $13 at the door.

And Miller, now 72, is coming out of retirement to conduct a couple of the pieces.

Miller, a retired professor at the music school, recently looked back on starting the Chamber Singers, which he created from the remnants of the Schola Cantorum, a choral group run by Royce Saltzman.

Then and now, the size has always been roughly the same, about 25 singers.

"I didn't want a big group," Miller said. "I wanted a reasonably small group. That's why we called it the Eugene Chamber Singers. And though I had interest in music of all periods, earlier music tends to be more appropriate oftentimes for smaller numbers."

Over the years, the group - entirely amateur - has performed about four times a year, with thematic programs ranging from one of Miller's favorites, "For, By and About Women," to programs with music built around refrains of "alleluia."

In 1993 the group traveled - at its members' own expense - to Irkutsk in the former Soviet Union to perform its music there in an exchange with an Irkutsk choir. Chamber Singers members stayed in homes with their Irkutsk counterparts.

"It was just really very thrilling to be able to sing with them," said Marilyn Bradetich, an alto. "But it was also very humbling, because of the conditions in which they lived."

The Chamber Singers have often premiered new choral music by local composers. One of the most moving of those pieces was written by UO music professor Harold Owen on the death of UO President Dave Frohnmayer's daughter, Katie, in 1991.

The Chamber Singers don't quite have a cult following around town, but they do have an audience.

"People know the group fills a niche in the community that no other group fills," said Kathy Turay, who joined up 25 years ago as a soprano, but now, with age, has moved on to the alto range. "We perform some very distinctive, often esoteric, chamber music. Jim was wonderful at seeking out unique literature. If you're coming for a hot, fun time you probably won't get it. But we built up this following that just loved this kind of music."

Friday's program will include Pier Luigi da Palestrina's Missa Brevis, conducted by Matt Svoboda, the singers' current conductor.

Miller will conduct Felix Mendelssohn's Magnificat and "Good Night Beloved."

"I thoroughly enjoyed it," Miller said of his years with the group. "The choir members could have been a little bit more compulsive about attendance. But they always came through pretty well at the end."