Mary Echols of Habersham County recently had the chance to perform in one of the world’s most prestigious venues, Carnegie Hall. Located in the heart of New York City, this music hall, known by music and theater lovers the world over, was founded by the wealthy Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It opened on May 5, 1891 with the American concert debut of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Since then tens of thousands of great artists have graced the hall’s stage and many local musicians have traveled there to perform in concert with bands and choirs.
Echols, a 2013 Habersham Central High School graduate, performed with the choir from Reinhardt University where she is studying Musical Theatre. Before heading to college, Mary was a former Habersham Singers Choir Member under the direction of BJ Addison at Habersham Central High School and was involved in numerous theatrical productions in Northeast Georgia.
So how do you get to Carnegie Hall by way of Habersham and what is it like?
That’s what Now Habersham’s Justin Gallagher set out to find out.
Growing Up in Habersham
Justin Gallagher: What is one word to describe you and it’s definition?
Mary Echols: Eccentric, I guess. Not afraid to be different, not afraid to put yourself out there for the opportunities you could have, that you would miss if you didn’t put yourself out there. Um, I’m definitely different. I know what I want and I go for it and I don’t care what it really takes to get me there.
Justin Gallagher: Please describe your time growing up in Habersham.
Mary Echols: Growing up I always knew that I wanted to act and sing and things like that and being in a small town where the only theater there is is the middle school shows and the community theater, it’s very limited. A lot of people kept telling me you know ‘this isn’t something you can do to really get you somewhere in life’ and I always refused to believe that. I knew what I wanted to do and like I said, I was going to do anything to get there. I was blessed to have known Paula Gibson since I was a baby. She got me started and was my first vocal coach and then Lillian Wayne Buck who has been on Broadway and who’s very renowned got me even further and she actually told me about Reinhardt. Basically growing up was it was just a very limited view that I had of musical theater. I lived on a farm with “farm people” and I never really fit in with that but I was always the one who was: “I want to watch a movie”, because I like watching other actors and see how they act and learning from them rather than wanting to go outside and work with chickens, the cows or the horses. It was always, I just knew what I wanted to do and there wasn’t much that I had here, besides of course my family supporting me and pushing me and any chance that I got to go to a music camp or theater camp, I went.
Justin Gallagher: If Habersham in general could have helped you more as a performer what would have been helpful?
Mary Echols: A little bit more support for the arts, definitely.
College Years
Justin Gallagher:What’s the best thing about going to Reinhardt University?
Mary Echols: It’s a small school and whenever I first went there they were just starting to build the theater. We don’t have a black box or anything, we use what we have which is an orchestral stage-so there’s not backstage; we have these huge giant mono lifts with huge sound shelves and we kind of use that as a blockade between the orchestra and the set. It’s a wonderful place, it’s a small school. There is more opportunity to get a lead role but it is growing and I love being a part of watching it grow and seeing all these new people come in and realize. The people are amazing, the teachers are wonderful and it’s just an all around amazing school to go to especially for the arts especially with now that our new president is a BFA in Theater the focus is getting less on sports which is a breath of fresh air and more on the arts.
Justin Gallagher: Name a show from middle school, high school and college that has impacted you in a good way.
Mary Echols: In middle school, my favorite was Seussical, it was so much fun. Then in high school, I really didn’t do much but I did Bye Bye Birdie and I was Kim, that was a lot of fun-that was a good show. In college , my favorite that I’ve done was Into the Woods, I love Sondheim.
Practice, Practice, Practice: The Way to Carnegie Hall
Justin Gallagher: What was your experience like performing at Carnegie Hall? What did you perform?
Mary Echols: It didn’t really hit me, that I was performing in such an amazing place until I was actually on stage in front of 2, 500 people. It was almost completely sold out and of course it wasn’t just our choir. There were choirs from Taiwan there and everything . My choir was singing with a choir from Oregon and from Michigan I think. We all kind of intermingled and got to know each other and we just became like this one voice and there was like church choirs there and our choir overall was close to 200 people combined with all of us. We rehearsed that entire Saturday before and then the morning of that Sunday and then that Sunday evening we performed. We sang the Testament of Freedom by Randall Thompson.The words are written by Thomas Jefferson writing about liberty and the first line of the song is “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty.” It was during the Revolutionary War and he was saying how the engines of despotism, “we’ll strike them down” and we have taken up arms to fight against these engines of despotism and we will lay them down as soon as we are given our freedom. It’s one of those songs where it’s more about the text and not so much about the melody and event tough there are beautiful harmonies in it, it is very textually driven.
It was the 60th Anniversary of the song being published. We were originally going to do “Mass of the Children” and the people from Carnegie called and said, ‘Hey, instead of that-you should do this song.’ We all hated it a first because you would go from John Rutter, Mass of the Children to Testament of Freedom but we could not have picked a better song to sing. Standing on that stage with this huge sound shell around us, and seeing the people go way up high, it was like a dream. I was like, ‘Oh my God, am I really here?’ You had people crying during the last word of the song because it was just an amazing experience . The entire experience of New York itself was amazing because it was the first time I was able to walk around by myself with a small group of people and learn New York and learn my way around.
Closing
From Habersham to Carnegie Hall, Mary Echols has proved to so many that with hard work, anything is possible. Echols plans to graduate from Reinhardt and would love to travel in a national touring production and possibly teach musical theater as well. “Stick with it. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not good enough . Don’t let anybody bring you down because of where you grew up,” says Echols. From working with middle schoolers on their annual musical to performing at New York City’s legendary, Carnegie Hall, Mary Echols continues to inspire and encourage those she meets.
