Gresham choir director makes curtain call after decorated 25 years

A week after the hardest conversation of her career, Gresham’s longtime choir director took her students to the Oregon coast.

Janine Kirstein had broken the news last spring — she was retiring after 22 years at the helm of the Gophers choral department. She wanted to step away while still at the top of her game, after another year of hoisting the Mt. Hood Conference trophy and celebrating high-finishing state soloists.

But though she was ready, it didn’t make telling some of the most important people in her life any easier.

“Leaving my students has been one of the hardest things I have ever done,” she said.

At the beach it was the first step toward eventual acceptance. They sat around a roaring fire on a cold night, singing their favorite songs. There were tears, laughter, reminisced stories.

“I fully made the decision in May, but it took a while because I love my job so much,” Kirstein said. “I have been teaching a long time, but I didn’t want to wait until I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Retirement is something she has been mulling for a few years, but the timing had never been quite right. One major hurdle was the pandemic. She didn’t want to step away before returning to some sense of normalcy following distanced learning, in which she attempted to conduct choirs via laptop screens.

“A lot of people retired during the pandemic, but I wanted to ensure the program was built back to what it had been,” she said.

Plus she wanted to experience the new auditorium, which was set to debut right when the COVID restrictions fell into place.

“I had been in that old auditorium for 20 years,” she said with a laugh. “The new facility is beautiful with wonderful acoustics.”

Now that auditorium will play host to her farewell celebration.

“This has been the greatest joy of my life, besides being a mom and grammy,” she said. “I am looking forward to traveling and seeing my family more.”

To celebrate their beloved choir teacher, more than a hundred choir alumni will return for a special night of music. A Retirement Celebration will begin at 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 25, at the Gresham Auditorium, 1200 N. Main Ave.

The free event will have solos, speeches, an alumni concert choir, honors and kudos, and a reception put on by the dedicated parent volunteers.

“Having all the alums back will be special,” Kirstein said. “I want my current students to see what they could become, realize you can do music your whole life.”

“I just want my choir one more time,” she said. “It will be overwhelming, but really magical.”

The music will include “Sleep” by Eric Whitacre and “Let My Love Be Heard” by Jake Runestad. Kirstein has also committed to singing — something that should excite her students as she very rarely grabbed the microphone in her 25 years, despite the many requests.

For any former Gophers who want to sing as part of the choir, which includes some rehearsals, email jkirstein4@gmail.com .

“I have been blessed by the privilege of teaching these wonderful students,” she said. “I am a completely different person than I would have been without them.”

“I love and I'm accepting of all of them,” she added.

Musical life

Kirstein was raised in a musical home.

A lifelong Greshamite, her father also had a love of singing — folks will remember him being a staple of the beloved “Meister Singers” for a few decades.

“Choral music is a special thing sent from God,” she said. “You start with a piece of paper with musical notes and a room full of people, and then you create something amazing.”

His passions were enthusiastically embraced by Kirstein, who began piano lessons at 7 years old and sang as much as possible. She attended Gresham High School and sang for Gary Funk. She sang in all the groups, was a mainstay with the musicals, was Valedictorian. Then at the University of Oregon she found a spark for teaching.

“I was going to follow in dad’s footsteps as a pharmacist, but I had kept auditioning and joining all these music groups and I couldn’t do both,” she said. “I decided to follow what I truly loved.”

In Eugene she did a practicum teaching kids, and realized how much she loved sharing her songs.

She first taught 12 years in the Centennial School District, at Lynchview Elementary and Centennial Middle School. Then she earned a masters of music from Portland State University, where she also joined the voice faculty for six years.

While earning her masters she formed the popular contemporary Christian group, “First Light,” which performed about 10 years.

In 1999 she first joined the Gresham-Barlow School District, first three years as a part-timer at Barlow and then Gresham, before fully taking over the Gopher program. She hit the ground running — building up the department from just three choirs to six.

Returning to Gresham was surreal. Even after two decades away, nothing had really changed. It was the same room, same Steinway piano that has probably been played by Gophers for more than a century.

“I was going through some musical notations and found files I had marked up as an 18 year old,” she said.

“I have really strong Gresham roots, I stayed here for all these years because this school and community are dear to my heart,” she added.

Plus Kirstein got to teach both her daughters, Bethany and Emily, who have been her staunchest supporters throughout her career as a choir director. And, unlike mom who eschewed following dad’s footsteps as a pharmacist, both Kirstein’s girls became music teachers.

The awards and accolades have been numerous. Under her direction, the Gophers are perennial winners of the Mt. Hood Conference title and multiple times in the top-5 of the OSAA State Choir Championships, and dozens of soloists have draped themselves in glory at the state OSAA solo competitions.

In just her second year with the Gophers, she led the school to a victory at the Festival of Gold in New York. Kirstein took her choir on many festival trips across the country, singing in places like Ground Zero and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Hawaii, Disneyland and Disneyworld.

The group was also a mainstay at community events, singing at Kiwanis, Rotary Club, and the Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital.

In 2018 she was named the OnPoint Community Credit Union’s 9-12 Educator of the Year, an accolade that still leaves her beaming.

“That honor meant a lot because it was for all teachers, not just choir directors,” she said.

Don’t take it for granted

Kirstein’s teaching style has always been about keeping the spotlight firmly on her students.

“I care about the kids more than anything else, and I think the key is they know it,” she said. “I try to connect with every single person in my choir room.”

Her motto at Gresham has been, “Don’t take it for granted.” That was literally painted on the walls of the old building in the choir room, and displayed via a huge banner in the new school — she was a bit worried the administration wouldn’t take kindly to her painting the walls on the first day back.

“I’ve tried so hard not to take these 25 years for granted,” she said. “All the biggest things in my life happened while I was at Gresham, I’ve lived through so much while in this building.”

Though Kirstein is retiring from her role at Gresham High, she will never fully step away from music. She is already teaching private lessons to kids across East County, including many of her Gophers. She would love to be a judge at competitions, and has agreed to step in as a guest clinician at schools around the region.

“I am looking for those new opportunities, because I could never completely step away from music,” she said.

None of this has been easy, and all this will take time for Kirstein to fully adjust. The start of the school year will be bizarre, as will not being heavily involved in the concerts and musical theater shows. Because of the private lessons, she will be “somewhere in the back” during the school’s performance of Beauty and the Beast this fall.

“I think I will wait a while to go to my first choir concert,” she admitted.

There are too many people to thank, for her career and the farewell shindig. Some include her daughters, long-time accompanist Koni Riedel, and her parent volunteers headed by Kim and Madisen Hallberg. She has also appreciated working with her "wonderful colleagues" at Gresham High School.

And Kirstein is looking forward to the new ideas and fresh perspective that inevitably comes with a change. And the students who have been there are determined to maintain many of the traditions, while also embracing new ones.

“The new director is going to be blown away by all those great voices that first day,” she said with a smile.