Co-founder retiring, but show must go on

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By Sean J. Miller | Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:52 AM CDT | () comments

Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES Bettendorf music director Deborah Ragan is preparing for her 18th and final Quad-City Metro Music Fest.

Paul Torkelson laughs when he thinks about the first time he directed the Quad-City Metro Music Fest at Bettendorf High School.

“It was tough,” recalled Torkelson, a music professor at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. “There was some confusion with what was going on with the music. A bunch of students didn’t come with the music learned.”

The students, he recalls, “were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, how are we going to get through this?’ ”

But the show had to go on.

“They stepped up and they focused,” Torkelson said.

What began as a near-debacle 18 years ago, quickly became an autumn Quad-City tradition.

Organizers made a special request for Torkelson to direct Metro Fest again this year.

And when the first note is sung tonight at Bettendorf High School, there will be another heavily involved person with ties to the event’s inaugural year.

Deborah Ragan, the choral music director at Bettendorf, who has organized the annual rehearsal and concert for 18 years, is retiring in May.

“I wanted to go while I still love it,” she said.

She established the concert after brainstorming with Ron May, a colleague who teaches at Moline High School, on a flight to Louisville, Ky.

“He and I decided we were going to do it,” Ragan, 55, said. “It’s grown into a pretty big deal.”

It began with 400 students from a handful of area schools, she said.

This year, 1,000 students from every high school choir in Scott County will participate, along with an 85-piece orchestra, she said. There will be a rehearsal during the day for the students, and a concert in the evening that is open to the community.

“It’s just fun to see the end product,” she said. “You sit there and just look at all the kids and say, ‘Look at what they did.’ It’s inspiring.”

The concert is a chance for the students to grow as performers, she said.

“It’s a day to put together music and get comments from another director, and a way for the kids to get together and not be competing,” she said, adding, “It’s another way to get joy out of the music.”

Ragan has had a passion for teaching music since she graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1975 with a degree in music education. But her passion did not translate into musical talent, she said.

“I couldn’t play a violin, but I can conduct an orchestra,” she added. “I love to conduct.”

Torkelson, who has worked with Ragan several times, said she has a gift for getting the best out of her students.

“She’s a good teacher,” he said. “She has a sense about her to make music sound good.”

Ragan said she likes to tell her students after the annual concert, “Look what you can do. If you can do this, you can do anything.”

It’s a lesson she learned in 1993 after taking about 90 music students to New York City.

“The choir did a performance concert in Carnegie Hall,” she said. “We had 25 minutes on stage all by ourselves. I have pictures.”

Two years later, she took 15 students to the All-State Music Festival — a rare feat, she said.

“Fifteen was the biggest number we’d had. Usually I take two or three.”

Knowing that this is her last year to be involved with Metro Fest has given her pause during the preparations.

And what runs through her mind at those times? “What am I going to do without this next year?”

If you go

What: Quad-City Metro Music Fest, which features 1,000 students from every high school choir in Scott County, along with an 85-piece orchestra

When: 7:30 p.m. today

Where: Bettendorf High School gymnasium

Tickets: $2 for students and senior citizens, $3 for adults

The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2450 or newsroom@qctimes.com.