Bellah to be interim director of Catalinas Community Chorus

By Cathalena E. Burch

PHOENIX — There’s new leadership for the five-year-old
Catalinas Community Chorus.

Veteran choral director William C. Bellah has been named interim
artistic director, replacing founding artistic director Cyndee
Chaffee, who resigned in March. Bellah will serve one year while
the chorus’s board of directors continues a search for a permanent
replacement, Chaffee said.

“It was really a hard decision, but my life has moved on,” she
said of her decision to leave the chorus, which she founded five
years ago.

“I live in Phoenix, and I’ve been commuting for 4 1/2 of the
five years. There’s just been so much commuting on Monday nights,
and I have a full-time job.”

Chaffee, a classically trained clarinetist, is director of music
at King of Glory Lutheran Church in Phoenix and also is pursuing
more chamber-music performance opportunities.

Her last performance with the chorus was in March with the
Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra. She said she notified the
chorus’s board last fall of her plans to leave.

“I just knew it was the right time that they could move
forward,” she said.

According to a news release from the chorus, Bellah has more
than 40 years’ experience directing choral groups in Arizona,
California, Kentucky and Ohio. He holds a bachelor’s degree in
music from Anderson University in Indiana and has studied at the
University of Arizona and the University of California-San
Diego.