It Takes a Choir

Gareth believes that spouses of military personnel, especially those personnel who have been shipped overseas into combat zones, are often the forgotten components of military life. He thus wants to give those spouses a voice, figuratively and literally, as well as provide them with a social outlet to get their minds off of worrying about their spouses. Fort Riley military base is his chosen locale to start a military spouses choir. The first challenge he faces is that spouses not only include wives, but a small minority of husbands, who he does not want to exclude, but also can't have those few number of bass clef voices sticking out as they would in such small numbers. The next issue is that although he finds that they as a group are good singers, they are not expressive having shut down emotionally, which he wants to change without them totally falling apart from letting those emotions flow, especially as one of the songs, "Breathe", is meant to be sung to their spouses. This issue becomes even more difficult with news of Fort Riley military personnel deaths in Afghanistan, but which Gareth hopes will be bolstered by the support of the choir as a collective. Gareth hopes that a surprise he has for the concert will inspire the choir to a magical performance.

Gareth wants to unite the students of Brashear High School in Pittsburgh, the student body which is now comprised of long time students of Brashear, as well as students from what was rival Langley High School. Langley closed, which forced the students there now to attend Brashear. What makes his task more difficult is that it is a lower middle class school where many students come from broken homes or homes without much supportive adult guidance. These issues are above and beyond the general problems of dealing with teenagers, such as getting them to focus, them lacking discipline, and their small cliques obstructing cohesiveness. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the student body together, he hopes some students will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Lord, who comes from a broken home (his father who is currently in prison), is being raised by his grandmother, has had problems with the law himself, and maintains a current 1.7 GPA; Chelsey, a former Langley student who is looking for an outlet to bring her vision of a united student body to life; Shailen, who is blind, autistic, but has an innate sense of music; Ty'rae, who is dealing with a personal tragedy; and Markita, who, to Gareth, is the epitome of not respecting authority, which may stem from her needing to be in authority for her own broken family.

The Madison Blues of Madison, Wisconsin, are one of ten hockey teams in the state in their amateur men's hockey league. Despite the team having good and passionate players, they had a record of 1-19 last season, and because of their poor performance, they rarely have any fans in the stands for their games. Pete and Susie, the team owners and managers and the figurative parental figures, are losing about $700 per game, and may have to fold the team if things do not improve. Gareth believes the Blues forming a choir not only will bring them together as a cohesive unit to improve their hockey performance as a team - Susie believing that the current mentality being every man for himself - but also bring some much needed publicity to fill the seats for games. He has to do some major convincing for the players to agree. Gareth feels he needs to do some team building exercises beyond just getting them to sing together. There is also the want to include Pete and Susie, which, because of Susie means finding other women. Gareth tries to convince the Madison Capitols, an equivalent female hockey team, to join the choir as well. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the Blues together, he hopes some players will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Casey, who had NHL aspirations, and knowing that will now not happen, needs something to fulfill the exhibitionist side of his personality; and Ryan, for who hockey was a salvation from a troubled and criminal past, who is one of the team captains and de facto leaders in the absence of a team coach, but who the other players do not respect in that pseudo-coach position as being just another one of the players.

Gareth is in the Southern Californian community of West Corvina, home to a large seniors population. In starting a seniors choir there, Gareth wants not only to show that life does not end at retirement, but that seniors can start activities which they've never done before. But convincing many of them of the latter is difficult, as he does admit that most seniors are set in their ways. He does find that teaching old dogs new tricks is more difficult than he wanted, and as such he feels that he literally needs to inject a youthful spirit and presence into the process. Among his choristers are: eighty-one year old Lee, who used to sing but stopped twenty years ago when her husband died; and outwardly serious Gary, a resonant bass who talks himself out of being able to sing what he considers the high notes, but which Gareth has to show him is well within his range. The one person Gareth hopes will stay in the choir but that is wavering is ninety-four year old Alice, whose extroverted exterior masks a fear of performing. By performance time, Gareth realizes that not all will be perfect, but hopes that his choristers' memories will not wane. Through it all, he wants to show that starting an activity late in life is a beautiful thing, regardless of the performance.

The fire & rescue department in Windsor-Severance, Colorado, located just outside of Denver, has been growing in leaps and bounds because of population growth and development. How that growth has manifested itself is the department's services now being housed in three separate centers, where the personnel at each does not know the personnel at the other two locations, which is not good for team building as firefighting requires trust amongst the ranks for life and death situations. Gareth believes that a choir within the department not only will provide an outlet for the team members to get to know each other, but also provide that camaraderie required to foster cooperation in their work. Beyond the real life distractions of needing to attend to calls, Gareth finds that other major obstacles in establishing a choir are that firefighters are trained not to show emotion which he wants in their singing, the team mentality making the firefighters shy about standing out as individuals, and the fear of not wanting to appear foolish to maintain their standing in the community. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the department members together, he hopes some people will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: artistically inclined Austin, who has challenges in his day to day life being dyslexic; Erik, a self-professed non-singer who wants to serenade his wife Emily for a special occasion; and Tracy, the only female firefighter who wants to make her male counterparts feel more comfortable with her in their work.

Crisfield, Maryland is a small fishing and crabbing village, which has been hit hard by the economic downturn affecting the seafood industry. There is not much keeping the younger generation there, as witnessed by a young man named Brock who has just accepted a job out of town, despite meaning that he will have to leave his grandmother on her own. In its heyday, the town did have a popular community choir led for sixty years by the beloved Margaret Lee Tawes until her retirement fifteen years ago. Since her death, much of her legacy has been memorialized, almost like they have been cast in stone to remain as are for eternity, with Crisfield to remain stuck in time. Regardless, the loss of the choir has meant a loss in a community building activity, and has placed a rift between generations: those that knew her, especially those that sung in the choir, and those that didn't know her. To build up Crisfield's sense of community, Gareth wants to revive a choir there. He knows he has an initial hurdle in possibly coming across as a pretender to Miss Margaret Lee's throne, especially being an obvious foreigner in a town where most residents have lived there all their lives. In it being a true representation of Crisfield, Gareth believes it is crucial to have watermen as part of the choir. A proclamation that Gareth makes early in the week has the potential to derail the entire process, and he has to consider carefully what he will do about it to get the townsfolk in his corner. Gareth feels more than anything that Crisfield has get out from the past to move forward in a positive sense.

Berwick, Pennsylvania is typical of many small American towns, especially those in the rust belt, that were once thriving, but have all but shut down with the downturn in the economy. Gareth wants to bring pride back to Berwick and have its residents have a sense of purpose again by forming a choir there. Despite what seemed to be a difficult recruiting drive, Gareth is pleasantly surprised by the first rehearsal turnout. But their enthusiasm cannot make up for some sound problems specifically by the men, who he believes are scared. He hopes that having a professional recording done of them singing and letting them really hear how they sound will resolve many of those issues. The performance is threatened by a proclamation by the men that they are going to do it right, or they're not going to do it at all, which may go against Gareth's philosophy of doing it for the sake of community togetherness. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the community together, he hopes some people will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Germaine, who needs an outlet to let loose the "born entertainer" part of himself, and who is trying to find out what he truly has to offer the world; Mindy, who used to sing when she was young but stopped as she felt she had to "grow up"; and Katie, who aspires to be a professional singer despite her severe health issues including asthma and fibromyalgia.

The United States Playing Card Company offices and factory have been housed in the same grand old building in Cincinnati, Ohio since 1860, that is until 2009 when they outgrew that location and moved across the river into a huge new facility in Erlanger, Kentucky. This move split what was once this tight knit company, where head office employees and factory floor workers now do not intermingle, losing what used to be a family feeling within the company. Gareth wants to bring the organization back into one cohesive unit by forming a company choir. Gareth believes the key to success is not only to get upper management, especially Marc, the company president and CEO, on board, but for them/him also to be in the choir. As the week progresses, that part of Gareth's strategy may have to be rethought. Gareth also chooses a symbolic location to hold their rehearsals. Beyond the overall goal of bringing the company together, he hopes some people will benefit personally from being in the choir, including: Missy, who comes from a musical family, but who doesn't sing with them as she feels she isn't good enough; Robert, a relatively new factory employee who doesn't really yet know anyone largely because he suffers from severe anxiety; and Rick, a long time factory employee whose vocal cords were severed in an accident at age twelve, who almost died from the accident, and who can only speak now due to what was experimental surgery at the time.