On Various Notes

Denise Richards doesn't consider herself a concert pianist, she says, "but I just love to accompany."

There's a trick to doing it successfully, she adds.

"You have to be able to anticipate when people are going to breathe."

Richards will be playing -- and breathing -- with the ACO Chorale for the spring concert Sunday and says she will enjoy every minute of it. She started in the orchestra pit during the Arts Center of the Ozarks musical in 1995 -- a real challenge, she says, since she was not the rehearsal pianist for the show -- and moved on the Chorale in 1996. She does sing, played clarinet at the University of Arkansas and also plays saxophone at church, but "it's the social aspect" of playing with the Chorale that she enjoys.

"If you're a concert pianist, you're just a pianist sitting alone on a bench all day long."

Instead, with the chorale "there's great diversity, but yet it's family," she says. "Everybody looks out for each other. There are no big egos."

Eden Miller, better known around the arts center for her visual art, has been singing with the Chorale since 2011.

"I started out in alto, but I can get down a lot lower," she says. "I started singing tenor, and the rest is history."

Miller says she grew up in a family where art was art was art, "not a case of one or the other." Her only artistic failure, she says, was the violin, "which I picked up in school and was at best mediocre. I wouldn't practice." She learned, however, that only through practice did one gain skill, a lesson she has applied to the rest of her art.

Jim Blount, better known as an actor, has been singing with the Chorale for 17 years. It was, he adds, his introduction to the arts center.

"It gets me through winter," he says, only half joking. "It keeps your voice in shape for the summer musical."

And, he adds, "it's a great opportunity to sing a lot of music that singing in the church choir doesn't afford you."

Denice Parkhurst, director of the Chorale, has chosen exactly that sort of music for this year's concert. The central piece of literature is South African Trilogy, a series of songs of "protest and praise" from the time of apartheid and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, who died in December at the age of 95. Sung in Afrikaans and in English, the songs will be accompanied by African drums.

"It's a really cool number, and with his passing, it's nice to be able to do this," Parkhurst says. "It's a pretty big deal for us."

Also on the program are a Canadian folk song titled "Soldier, Won't You Marry Me"; "Riversong," a Celtic song of celebration with mandolin, flute or recorder, violin and drums; and "Waiting for the Light to Shine" from "Big River."

"I like to do the Broadway show tunes in preparation for the summer musical," she says, "to keeping our singing chops up for that."