Howard, the founding Artistic Director and Conductor of the Heart of America Men’s Chorus, is in his eighth season with HOAMC. He says that is has been a thrill to watch the chorus grow from a group of 18 men standing on risers with music in hand into a chorus of 40 men who perform a wide range of musical styles. Howard tells us that it has been a thrill and joy to work with HOAMC.

 In addition to serving as the Artistic Director for HOAMC, he has also been the Director of Music at Plymouth Congregational Church for 16 years. Howard was instrumental in starting the Wichita Chamber Chorale, the Plymouth Concert Series, Word & Note, and has contributed to many other Wichita choral organizations. Howard has much excitement around the eighth season of HOAMC and the richly diverse music the chorus is performing. Following Let Freedom Sing the chorus will present Let Music Live; a concert that will show case the rich choral sounds of HOAMC as we share what music means in the lives of all of our men. Music is the center of Howard’s life and he is usually either conducting or promoting music in Wichita.

We are saddened to report that Mark Walker ended his work with HOAMC after 7 years.  His last concert was the April 24/25 performances of Let Freedom Sing.  He will be leading and singing in Summer Reverberations II...A Voices from the Heart reunion concert on Sunday, May 16th.  That will be your last opportunity to hear from Mark as an HOAMC/Voices member.

We will deeply miss the talents of Mark as well as his on stage personality and role as MC for our shows.  Mark started out as a singing member, moved into assisting in vocal warm ups, into the Assistant Artistic Director role and then taking on Production Manager

Mark is ready to, and thinking about, starting a group of his own in the future.  While he has not made any final decisions on that a youth/teenage ensemble is one of those possibilities.

Until then he will be working extremely hard to raise about 60,000.00 to allow two of his performing groups at Heights, about 50 students, to get to Nashville this November.  His Heights Madrigals and Heights Falconettes were selected to perform with the Nashville Symphony in their scheduled concert series.  The students will spend an entire week in Nashville and his students will make up about 45% of the American All Star choir that has been assembled.

We will miss him greatly but wish him the best of luck.