When is a city as old as a choral performance?
When the city is Ripon in California, and the choral project is the Ripon Oratorio Society’s enduring presentation of George Friedric Handel’s “Messiah.”
Ripon was incorporated in 1945, the same year the Ripon Oratorio Society was formed and started performing Handel’s “Messiah.”
Through the decades, the Almond Capital of the World and the Ripon Christmas Messiah have been moving onward to the same beat – the city toward growth and progress, the Oratorio Society to the beat of the same SATB voices in harmony with organ and/or piano, and trumpet. The two have become so synonymous with each other that, for many residents and many non-residents as well, the master composer’s most beloved oratorio has become the official prelude to the Christmas season, not in a commercial sense but a spiritual one.
The family that sings the Messiah together
Not just its longevity but the length of time many of the choral’s singers have been singing the Messiah every year has made this event not just steeped in tradition but a glue that has connected multigenerational families together.
It’s easy for septuagenarian Lawrence DeRuyter, for example, to remember when he first started singing the Messiah with the Ripon Oratorio Society. It was the year his son, Bob, was born – 1962. The family had just moved to the United States from Canada.
Today, that baby is the director and conductor of the Messiah, has been for 19 years in a row now.
“I was probably in the audience” the first year his father sang with the group, said a laughing DeRuyter, also the music and band director at Ripon Christian High School.
The older DeRuyter sings base. Middle son, Randy, a baritone, also sang with the group.
“He’s a great singer,” Lawrence DeRuyter proudly said of his middle son who now lives in Escalon.
He estimates that in the more than five decades he’s been singing the Messiah, he has missed only a couple performances due to illness.
“This is a most beautiful piece of music ever written that tells the story of Christ, with the Hallelujah as the most famous piece,” said a grinning Lawrence DeRuyter.
But his personal favorite is “’Worthy is the Lamb’ – a powerful music,” he said.
There’s one member of the group that has been singing it even longer than Lawrence DeRuyter. That’s Helen Vander Wall. She started in 1953, almost a decade before Lawrence DeRuyter started. Before they started the last rehearsal, director Bob DeRuyter singled out Vander Wall who was recognized by a prolonged applause from a very impressed group.
Another Ripon Messiah member whose family roots go a long, long way is David Douma.
Prior to being solicited to accompany the Messiah on the organ 19 years ago, the Ripon native sang the Messiah while in high school at Ripon Christian. He was just following the footsteps of his parents who also sang with the group, and that of several relatives.
Douma shared this anecdote that happened a few years ago – “a funny experience” – which informed him about other relatives who have been part of the Ripon Christmas tradition but didn’t know anything about.
“Some of my cousins whom I had not seen and talked to before were at the performance. Afterwards, they came to the organ where I was and brought with them one of the young women who had been singing in the chorus. I didn’t even notice her because there were 100-plus singers and I was busy doing things on the organ. As it turned out, she was my grandmother’s great-great-niece. I had never met her before in my life. I didn’t even know her name! And now, that young woman is off in college (Dordt) and a music major,” Douma said laughing.
He laughed even harder when he realized he does not even remember her name.
There are many intergenerational families, not just his own family – from teens to great-grandparents – that feel Christmas is not the same without the Ripon Messiah, Douma said. “It’s multiple generations of the same family singing in the chorus.”
The family of soprano Jamie Eskes is one of them. She has been singing the Messiah for the last six years, but her parents, Dawn and Randy Eskes, go even farther back. They have been singing since the 1980s, said Eskes who was born and raised in Ripon and works for her father’s HW Construction in Ripon.
“This is definitely the reason for Christmas,” she said.
But while everybody knows the powerful “Hallelujah Chorus” in Handel’s Messiah, “there is so much more to it” than that one piece, she said. The composition goes from the birth of Jesus to his resurrection, and “it’s great to be reminded of that,” Eskes said about the spiritual reason behind her singing the Messiah every year.
Carla Strong, who started singing the Messiah five years ago and drives over to Ripon from Salida for the rehearsals and performance every year, said the same thing, and adding, “It starts the holiday for me.”
Other avid singers and lovers of Handel’s Messiah who are from other communities in the Central Valley make the trek to Ripon every Christmas season to add their voices to this holiday chorus.
“Some singers have come from Sonora, Turlock, and Oakdale. We have a lot of German Baptists who sing with us,” said Bob DeRuyter.
At one time, there were Catholic nuns who came to sing with the group, he said.
“There’s one woman in (the) soprano (section); she’s from Modesto. She sings for the Modesto Symphony Chorus but she comes to Ripon to sing Messiah,” Douma said.
“One year, we had a couple of young women driving down from Sacramento to join us. They have relatives in the (Ripon) area. That’s the kind of connection that goes on. I come all the way from San Francisco, for crying out loud. I’ve been in San Francisco for 14 years,” added Douma who was organist for 15 years at the Congregational Church in Modesto (1975-1991), followed by stints at St. Francis Episcopal in Turlock, St. Paul’s Episcopal in Sacramento, St. Anne in Stockton, and at St Giles Episcopal in Moraga for 12 years until he retired last year.
Bob DeRuyter alluded to the reason behind the longevity, attraction, and popularity of the Ripon Christmas Messiah when he said that the chorus is “made up of people who believe in what we’re singing.”
Featured soloist in the Ripon Messiah
The Ripon Messiah, for many years, has featured the voices of several professional and semi-professional musicians and soloists who perform the solo numbers such as “He Shall Feed His Flock,” “Every Valley,” and “Worthy is the Lamb,” a personal favorite of septuagenarian singer Lawrence DeRuyter.
This year’s performance will feature the following soloists:
• Soprano Kelsi Schuller of Ripon who has been with the Ripon Messiah for the third year in a row. A graduate of Dordt College, she has been with the Modesto Performing Arts, Townsend Opera, the Ripon Oratorio Society, and other local choirs.
• Alto Merilyn Telle Vaughn has been with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for 27 years. She grew up in Modesto and now lives in Stockton. She holds a music degree from California State University in Turlock, and has also studied at San Francisco State.
• Tenor Joe Rykert has been a soloist with the Ripon Oratorio Society for years. A photographer by profession, the Modesto resident has been with the Modesto Performing Arts and the Townsend Opera.
• Base Larry Dorman is singing solo for the first time this year. The former owner of Yesterday’s Books until he retired, he has been a frequent performer with the Modesto Performing Arts, the Townsend Opera, and other choirs.
Accompanists besides Douma at the organ are trumpeteer Robert Stone, a native of Northern California who is active with the Central Valley Brass and other groups, who will do a trumpet solo, and Barbara Viss, a native of Iowa and a graduate of Dordt College, who has been the Ripon Messiah pianist for many years.
Messiah performance was pilgrim during early years
The Immanuel Christian Reformed Church on Fourth Street and Orange Avenue in Ripon has been the home of the annual Christmas Messiah performance for several decades. But during the early years, the Ripon Oratorio Society has had several different performance venues.
The Oratorio Society had a different mission at its inception. Comprised of members who shared the same love of singing, the group’s plan was to perform not just the Messiah at Christmas but to present other concerts in the spring as well. Somehow, over the course of the decades, the Messiah retained its popularity and soon became a permanent part of the Christmas celebration.
The first half-dozen years of the Oratorio Society, performances were held in other venues – churches other than Immanuel Christian Reformed, a gym or school. That’s logical since Immanuel was not guilt until 1952, Douma pointed out.
“For a while, they also did performances in the Ripon Christian High gym, but that was only for a while. Then they went back to using the church,” said Douma who was born and raised in Ripon and has sung with the group since he was in high school. After earning his music degree at Dordt College in Iowa, he came back to California and became organist at several parishes and churches in the Central Valley. About 20 years ago, he was tapped to accompany the Messiah on the organ and has been doing that honor every year ever since. He now lives in San Francisco and has retired as church organist.
Ripon Oratorio Society an independent organization
Since the Ripon Messiah has been performed year after year at the Immanuel Christian Reformed Church that has given the impression that the program is sponsored by the church. It’s not. The Ripon Oratorio Society is an independent organization and not connected with the church.
“In its early years, they’d do the Messiah every winter, and then in the spring would do other major choral works such as those by Mendelssohn. They used to do some of those other major choral works kind of in rotation. That traditional springtime performance ended – I don’t know when; it wasn’t even when I was in high school. But it ended somewhere along the way,” said Douma, whose parents and other members of the family were also part of this tradition.
He likes the fact that the Oratorio Society is independent of any specific denomination or church.
“It’s an interfaith kind of thing and brings people of different faiths together. They come with their families – some of them. It would start with some of the young girls, then they’d come with their mothers, then the sons with their fathers until they became a mainstay. It’s really neat,” Douma said.
