Profile of conductor of Endless Mountains Children’s Choir

When Christine Plonski Sezer, Ph.D., retired from teaching and moved back to her native Northeast Pennsylvania, it didn’t take long before she was feeling a bit of a void.

“After six months, I said, ‘I miss my kids,'” she recalled.

Then Dr. Sezer looked around and realized that Susquehanna County had no community choir like the one she had conducted for years in New Jersey. And that was all the incentive she needed to start the Endless Mountains Children’s Choir.

That was three years ago. Today, the choir boasts 20 kids ages 5 through 15 who spend the year performing their vast repertoire – everything from the great classical composers to Broadway standards to ethnic folk songs – at nursing homes, hospitals, churches and festivals throughout the area.

“They’re a community choir, and that’s what they’re supposed to do – give back to the community,” said Dr. Sezer, who is back living on her family’s farm in Gibson Twp. She returned to the area with her husband, Ilhan, to help take care of her ailing mother, Isabell Plonski, who passed away in November.

Christmastime is a particularly busy period for the chorus, which is in the midst of a 12-concert schedule for December. Two days ago, they played in the Capital Rotunda in Harrisburg, while a couple of weeks back they traveled to New York City to see the famed Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.

“Then we went over to Rockefeller Center and sang a little concert in front of the Christmas tree,” Dr. Sezer said. “That was a really nice day for them.”

Last year, the choir performed at the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Sezer is now in the initial stages of planning a proposed 2012 trip to Austria, where the group would sing with the famed Vienna Boys Choir. Dr. Sezer had the opportunity to conduct the Boys Choir when she took her group from New Jersey to Vienna in 2005.

First, though, the choir has to raise a significant amount of money, Dr. Sezer said. Fundraising is crucial for the group, which practices for free at South Gibson United Methodist Church, because the kids don’t pay tuition.

“Everything we raise for the kids we spend on them,” said Dr. Sezer, who doesn’t take a salary for her work with the choir.