Director of choirs inspires youngsters

When May Shumway was 8, her parents adopted a time-honored method of ensuring that her abilities as a piano player continued to progress: bribery.

“They paid me 5 pesos to play a hymn and 10 pesos to memorize it,” said Shumway, who was born and raised in the Philippines and began playing at age 5. “I figured out that it was more cost-effective to just play off the music than to spend the time memorizing it.”

Over the next couple of years, Shumway played so many hymns so well that she was called to be the official pianist for her church area.

With the new calling, the payments from her parents came to an end. But by then it didn’t matter. She enjoyed the attention — even as the congregation struggled to see her tiny form behind the piano — and, more important, her enjoyment of music had blossomed into love.

Shumway’s musical inclinations weren’t confined to the piano. As a child she sang in a choir and enjoyed dancing. She also played a lot of tennis and table tennis, sports of which her parents approved because they weren’t likely to endanger her precious hands. (Unbeknownst to her parents, Shumway also signed up for volleyball, basketball and softball in high school.)

Shumway was 18 when she left the Philippines for Oahu to attend Brigham Young University-Hawaii.

There, on her way to earning a degree in elementary education, she participated in concert choir and made the acquaintance of a recently returned missionary, Aaron, who sang bass.

Shumway liked that he too was a middle child. More important, given the way their relationship developed over long hours of choir practice, he too had an ear and heart for music.

“I always said I wouldn’t marry someone who was tone-deaf,” Shumway said, laughing.

The two did indeed marry and are now the proud parents of six children ages 6 to 21.

To help make ends meet, Shumway gives piano and choir lessons out of their home. She has some 35 private and group piano students, a pair of Singers Company choirs specifically for girls, and a boys and girls keiki chorus for ages 5 to 12.

Shumway’s choir pedagogy is drawn directly from her own experiences. She selects kids who love to sing and coaches them with high energy, enthusiasm and a conspicuous absence of pressure and negativity.

“Part of performing is loving what you do,” she said. “If you have that love, you can share it with the audience. You have to mean what you are singing. Otherwise, why bother?”

All of Shumway’s choir students are required to perform a solo number. While some can’t wait for the opportunity, others need a little extra encouragement. For Shumway that’s hardly a problem.

“I’m crazy,” she says. “I’ll exaggerate a lot because I want to be as excited as they are. I want to make the music come alive for them and for them to believe in themselves. By the end of the first class, everyone wants to sing a solo.”

Shumway also emphasizes self-awareness as a key component of working harmoniously as a group. Thus, her students well understand when she she prompts them to use their “angel” voices. They understand, that is, that angels don’t yell and don’t put themselves ahead of others.

Shumway, who recently returned to school to further her studies in music education, said there is a singular beauty that reveals itself when a choir comes together.

“You feel like you’re doing something right when that happens, when their voices blend together and they sound like one group,” she said.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.