Choir celebrates life and its beloved director

The current repertoire of the Valley Voices Community Choir includes a song by Sonja Poorman titled “Celebrate Life.” An upbeat song with an optimistic message, it could be a welcome part of any choral program. But it has special meaning to the Valley Voices this season as we celebrate the life of our director, Allyson Kuechmann.

You have to meet Allyson to truly understand her magic. Something of an academic dilettante, Allyson sported college majors in speech pathology, foreign languages, economics and history before finally settling on music at Moorpark College in Southern California. And eschewing the traditional approach of completing a degree and pursuing a career, Allyson simply jumped into choral directing and found she had so many directing opportunities that she had no time to finish a degree.

Back in Montana, Allyson made her first appearance with the Valley Voices in 2000. Recruited by a women’s barbershop chorus to create a mixed choir, Allyson and the Valley Voices made their debut with a group of 22.

Last year, Allyson’s 18th year leading the choir, I had the honor of closing the spring concert. In that closing I said, “Many of us have sung in several choirs during our lifetimes and we truly appreciate having Allyson as our leader. To paraphrase John Steinbeck, for other directors we have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Allyson it is love.

Allyson was born with a heart murmur. It’s not so much a diagnosis as an observation, but a year ago her heart got noisy enough to warrant further investigation. The problem was her aortic valve. After an EKG and an echo cardiogram, Allyson’s doctors determined the excessive noise was caused by severe stenosis, or narrowing, of the passageway in the valve. The valve, which controls the flow of blood between chambers of the heart, was in danger of closing completely. Surgery was essential.

Was surgery risky, she asked. No, she was told. The complication rate with this kind of surgery was less than 2 percent. So the plan was surgery on June 22, four days in the hospital, four weeks at home, and plenty of time to recover before the fall session.

The surgery went well, by all initial criteria. But four days passed and, instead of the planned rapid recovery, Allyson had fluid in her lungs. Gallons of fluid. Atrial fibrillation appeared to be the culprit. A-Fib, as it’s frequently called, is when the input chamber of the heart flutters instead of beating steadily. A-Fib can lead to complications such as stroke and fluid in the lungs.

So ablation surgery, a relatively minor procedure, was scheduled for July 3. But when an echo cardiogram performed during pre-op showed fluid around her heart, the surgeon’s words were simple: “Plans have changed.” Instead of ablation, surgery was planned to drain the fluid. The good news was that the procedure would require only a two-inch incision.

Allyson awoke from the surgery experiencing what she described as the worst pain she could ever imagine. A bearded male nurse was standing by as Allyson regained consciousness. Not one to mince words or gestures, Allyson grabbed him by the collar and demanded to know exactly what had happened. Two-inch incision, indeed!

Turns out the problem wasn’t the fluid around her heart but rather a big hole in her right ventricle. Finding the equivalent of a gunshot wound in her heart, the surgeons concluded that the two-inch incision wasn’t sufficient to address the problem. So they cracked her chest completely open again and dove in to do the repair.

Allyson credits luck and the talent of her cardiac team with saving her life. Sending her home with anti-arhythmic drugs could have mitigated the A-Fib, but the doctors would not have found the hole in her heart. At home, probably sooner than later, that hole would have leaked enough to be symptomatic. And, at that point, Allyson probably would have died during the ride back to the hospital.

The fall session of Valley Voices traditionally begins the Monday following Labor Day. And following tradition, that’s exactly how it went, with Allyson at the front of an 87-member choir looking healthier than ever and the song, “Celebrate Life,” in the repertoire. “Celebrate Life,” it begins, “Celebrate love. Celebrate all the things that you’ve been dreaming of.”

Normally we don’t commit our music to memory. “Celebrate Life” is an exception.