Only three weeks after learning of the passing of Robert Page (of whom I wrote back in August), it was even more shocking to learn of the passing of Gail B. Poch on August 31. That makes three important figures from the choral world—the third was Gregg Smith (1931–2016) in July, about whom I shall write in the coming weeks—leaving us this summer.
Gail was my introduction to the power and potential of choral music well performed. He conducted my very first Pennsylvania Music Educators Association District Chorus at Marple-Newtown High School in January, 1970.
That program included my first exposures as a performer to the music of Jan Sweelinck, J.S. Bach (though in a decidedly inauthentic form), Benjamin Britten, Franz Schubert, Houston Bright, Joseph Canteloube, Ernest Bloch, and Leonard Bernstein; much of which, strangely, I have not had opportunity to perform in any capacity since then. As it turned out, this event also marked the first time I had ever had the opportunity to sing any Jewish choral music of substance—in addition to the Bloch “Silent Devotion & Response (Yih’yu l'ratzon)” from his Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), we also performed Gail’s own arrangement (or, possibly, his edition or adaptation; I was never certain which it was) of the Israeli (?) folk melody Ki mi tziyon. (Bernstein’s French Choruses from “The Lark” didn’t fit that category, of course.)
I went home after the Saturday night concert with a head swimming with sounds I’d never heard or imagined previously. It was at that point that I began collecting scores—of choral festival music at first, but then branching out from there into music by composers whose names I recognized, or pieces that simply looked interesting.
(I also went home that Saturday night having acquired my first serious girlfriend—I a sophomore and she a senior from a neighboring high school—but that story will have to wait for my memoirs...)
And I went home that Saturday night thinking about college (and Temple University) seriously for the first time.
As an undergraduate at Temple, I had two conducting classes taught by Gail, which were wonderfully run. I remember how he managed to teach us the pieces we all were to conduct without doing a single drop of conducting himself.
Aside from those classes, I had little interaction with him other than a staged and choreographed production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Unicorn, The Gorgon, and the Manticore which he conducted and in which I sang; and also when he served as the narrator for a recording by Temple's Concert Choir of Karl Korte’s oratorio Pale is This Good Prince, both in my freshman year at Temple. (!) He was also my examiner for passing advanced Aural Theory by exam.
When I returned for grad school in 1981, Robert Page had moved on to Pittsburgh and been replaced by Alan Harler, but Gail was still very much on the faculty and very involved with the graduate choral conducting program. I had the good fortune to take a modern choral literature course with him and also to be coached privately by him on my second graduate conducting recital. Additionally, he was my supervisor for my graduate assistantship in conducting the second year of my degree program.
At that time, he had begun working on a conducting textbook based on a system of movement analysis and choreographic notation by Rudolf von Labann; our job was to apply what he was working out in actual conducting pedagogy. His pedagogical research and development was collected and finally turned into book form—The Conductor’s Gesture—by his student James Jordan, which is published by, and still available from, GIA Publications.
Gail always lived in the shadow of whoever had the title of Director of Choral Activities at Temple. I think he was, ultimately, seriously under-appreciated and under-acknowledged in his time there. To hear Temple graduates speak of him and their first encounters with him—invariably through high school choral festivals such as the one I described above—it’s clear that Gail was one of the College of Music’s secret weapons for recruitment. That, in itself, is a proud legacy!
I’m certain that veterans of the Reading (PA) Choral Society can tell different, but equally loving stories of working with him. We all miss you terribly; but we can say, confidently, that your memory is for blessing. And thank you—for opening so many young lives and ears to the power and joy of great choral music!
Finally, for those interested: my own performances of the abovementioned Sweelinck and Bloch pieces; from many years later, based on what I learned from Gail’s leadership.
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