PENINSULA ARTS: Choral magic

Dr. Joanna Medawar Nachef in her El Camino College office. Photo

Dr. Joanna Medawar Nachef, the first female conductor from the Middle East, forms her own choral group for her adopted hometown of Palos Verdes

Dr. Joanna Medawar Nachef in her El Camino College office. Photo

Dr. Joanna Medawar Nachef in her El Camino College office. Photo

High up on a wall in Dr. Joanna Medawar Nachef’s modest office at El Camino College hangs an old black and white page from a newsletter that dates back to Nov. 20, 1984. Flanked by two tall floral arrangements, a younger version of the dark-maned choral director smiles at the camera. The flier marked her doctoral conducting recital, her first conducting experience at the Norris Theater where she led her fellow classmates in a concert of Bach and Beethoven.

Three decades later, the 56-year-old Palos Verdes resident is back with her own semi-professional choir group to gift to her community what she believes is the highest caliber of choral arts.

The Joanna Medawar Nachef Singers, which is comprised of 26 diverse singers handpicked by Nachef herself (17 of them are former El Camino students), will launch their inaugural season at the Norris Theater on Saturday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. with a performance of G. F. Handel’s three-part Messiah, accompanied by an instrumental ensemble and four operatic soloists. Nachef will give a pre-concert talk about the famous oratorio beginning at 7 p.m.

“It’s certainly what I call a salad bowl, not a melting pot,” an enthusiastic Nachef says. “We keep our identity and yet we are in this mix to present this delicious meal. What brings us together is the dressing. For us, all the people come from different backgrounds, and music is what brings us together. And I’m just the spatula that mixes that salad bowl and presents to the audience something that is delicious, healthy and enriching.”

“Messiah,” the first of three performances planned for the season at the Norris Theater, will be followed by the JMN Singers’ spring concert “Mozart’s Requiem” on April 3 and summer concert “Red, White and the American Blues” on June 12.

Nachef, who has sat in the director’s chair for El Camino’s choral activities program for nearly 20 years, is not unfamiliar with making full circles. At 16, she and her family left war-torn Lebanon and settled in her uncle’s home in Gardena. Exposed to playing piano and singing in her childhood through her musical mother, Nachef was 18 when she took her first conducting class at El Camino College. There, she made a deep impression on the late Dr. Jane Hardester, who was then the choral director.

When Nachef’s father moved the family back to Lebanon just weeks before the end of her first semester, a letter from Hardester arrived in the family’s mailbox. It read, “So what are you doing about your conducting?”

Today, Nachef is recognized as the first female conductor from the Middle East. Having toured nationally and internationally with various groups, her dynamic rap sheet includes three historic performances at Carnegie Hall with choirs from Lebanon, Dubai and Los Angeles. She gave her conducting debut in her native Lebanon at the 2009 Al Bustan Festival. She returned in 2014 to conduct the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra.

Stateside, she conducted the South Bay-based Los Cancioneros Master Chorale for two decades before leaving the job last December. She continues as a choral director for Peninsula Community Church.

“I always had this passion,” she says, “but you look at yourself, a female from a different culture. … Let me tell you, I choose my femininity. I choose my skills that God has given me. I don’t want to take any man’s place, that’s never my intent.”

It was an unprecedented route, but that didn’t stop her from pursuing what she deeply felt was her call. At the University of Beirut, where she was studying business economics (she was to take over her father’s clockmaking business along with her brothers), she formed the Campus Crusades, a choral group with fellow university students. With Nachef at the helm, the students practiced for weeks to put on a Christmas concert for the public. Nachef’s mother, a soprano singer, sang a solo part. Not long after, her father, deciding the conditions would not improve in Lebanon, moved the family back to the U.S. for good.

Nachef jumped right back into her aspirations to master the art of conducting. She enrolled at Cal State University Dominguez Hills, where she earned her Bachelor in Music for piano performance. At 22, she continued her education at the University of Southern California where she earned her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master in Music degrees in Choral Music. Her natural gift was recognized by faculty again and again.

“You’re in silence but in silence with the visual aspect, the mental, emotional and physical representation that you as a conductor are showing,” Nachef says about conducting. “You’re getting out this amazing sound — four part harmonies, musicality, rhythmic intensity, and then beauty. To me that was like, wow. It’s that human connection, the magic that happens when the conductor and a group of singers are focused on one purpose, creating what we call choral art.”

Over the last 30 years, she has taught hundreds of students as an instructor at El Camino and as a music director at CSUDH’s Math and Science Academy, where her son Tim is finishing his last year. This past year, she was recognized as Faculty of the Year at El Camino College.  

“For me, I’ve chosen to instill in the younger generation, especially the university students, the desire to find what wakes them up in the morning, what will get them out of bed,” Nachef says. “What is that passion they need to find to have a fulfilling life? That’s what I’ve chosen to do.”

This summer, she is bound for Vienna with a group of 30 choir members — former El Camino students, church choir members and others she’s worked with — to perform spirituals and gospels, her expertise, at a lineup of churches. She hopes to take her group of singers to Lebanon in the near future.

“Music is the most incredibly easy way of reaching out to people and connecting with them,” Nachef says. “You don’t need to know their language. You can just hum a tune together and you feel connected.”

To purchase tickets for the Joanna Medawar Nachef Singers’ upcoming season, visit http://www.aohsingers.com. PEN

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