By Jim Lowe
RUTLAND, VT — While most folks celebrating their 90th birthday would be happily enjoying retirement, Robert De Cormier was in the middle of directing a chorus rehearsal.
“There’s a rumor going around,” interrupted a member of the chorus. “Your memory isn’t going, is it?”
“Well, yes, it is,” De Cormier retorted with a laugh.
Whereupon the 100 members of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus erupted into “Happy Birthday!”
De Cormier is the founding director of the VSO Chorus and he and its members were rehearsing at Rutland’s Trinity Episcopal Church on Saturday afternoon. De Cormier, at 90, will conduct the VSO and VSO Chorus in both Fauré and Mozart Requiems on Jan. 28 at Burlington’s Flynn Center and Jan. 29 at Rutland’s Paramount Theatre.
“We’re going to give you a competency test, like the Department of Motor Vehicles,” said another chorus member, leading De Cormier across the room.
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