News

Concert choir dedicates show to gifted tenor

Kirsten Cutler and Judy Meinzer.

By Bill Moss, Published: November 24, 2014

Wherever Sam Guberman went, singing came too. He couldn't help it.

When he worked at Trader Joe's, he'd stand by the whole-grain crackers and croon to the customers. Although his instructors in radiology tech school warned him not to, he would burst into song in front of a patient rolling into an MRI. This time of year, he would recruit a platoon of singers and deploy to nursing homes to sing Christmas carols.
Sometimes, during rehearsal, Carolina Concert Choir singers would stop singing so they could listen and enjoy Sam's amazing tenor sound.
Sam even sang at his own funeral.
Guberman, 36, died the night of Oct. 13 in a head-on crash with a wrong-way driver on I-26 in Hendersonville. He had just left the weekly Carolina Concert Choir practice at Grace Lutheran Church on his way home to Greer, S.C., when he collided on the misty night with a car operated by a 91-year-old driver.
Raised in Miami, Samuel Davis Guberman enrolled at Ithaca College School of Music, where he had a professor named Lawrence Doebler. Years later, teacher and student would be reunited when Doebler, retired to Hendersonville, took on the directorship of the Concert Choir, an auditioned ensemble with members from North Carolina and South Carolina.
"Larry Doebler was one of his professors in college and be loved him," Guberman's mother, Coralie, said in an interview. "When he read he was retiring Sam wrote him a letter. Larry wrote back to him and said I'm moving to Hendersonville, and Sam said, that's 45 minutes from where I live."
After an audition, Guberman joined the choir. Wearing shorts year-round and often a tie-dyed shirt, he was a gifted singer and a joy to be around, choir members said before their rehearsal Monday night. The choir will perform Bach's "Magnificat," Christmas carols and other works during its annual Christmas show.
"He was by far our strongest tenor," said Edie Clark. "The day he was killed he auditioned for the tenor solo in Bach, and I stood at the door and listened. It was glorious."
The Hendersonville-based ensemble is dedicating its Dec. 6 Christmas concert to longtime choir member Sandra Kremer, who died in May, and to Sam Guberman.

'He was the tenor'

"He was the tenor," choir President Judy Meinzer said of Guberman. "He was the voice in the tenor section. A fabulous voice. He was on his second career (as a radiology tech). Music was still in his life. That's why he drove up here every Monday."
Gifted singers themselves, choir members turned into fans when Guberman sang.
"He was such a spark of light," said Cathy Ridings. "He was not only talented but super super artistic with his voice. He was such an energetic presence. I loved singing beside him. Sometimes I would stop and just listen to him."
During Sam's solos, the other singers would look out at the audience. The faces seemed mesmerized by the quality and passion of his singing.
His funeral at Temple Israel in Greenville drew a large crowd of students and teachers from the radiology program at Greenville Technical College and friends locally and from Ithaca.
"There were people there from all over," Meinzer said. "The place was packed. I think probably three-quarters of our choir was there to sing, and then there were other students who lived in the Greenville area. It was a pretty full temple."
During the funeral, the family played a tape of his junior recital.

'Outpouring has been amazing'

In an email to Doebler and the concert choir, Sam's mother said the expressions of condolence had stunned her.
"Truly we have already received over 100 cards and letters and they continue to arrive every day," she said. "There have been many trees planted through the Jewish National Fund in Israel in Sam's memory."
"The outpouring has been amazing," she said in an interview. "You live with someone in the mundane day to day and you don't realize how much they meant to people outside of your home."
Mrs. Guberman promised to attend the Carolina Concert Choir Christmas show on the front row, "cheering loudly for all of you and crying inside that my son could not be there with you."
On Monday night, less than three weeks before the performance, the choir went to work on the music. Doebler said he expects the singers will draw on the emotion of the occasion.
"Fortunately, it's a very happy piece, a vey joyful piece," he said of Bach's "Magnificat." "Others would be harder I think."
As the voices soar, choir members and audience may well feel the spirit of a gifted tenor sound silenced too soon.

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Ticket are $22 for adults and $5 for students and can be purchased from choir members or at the Visitors Center at 201 S. Main St., Laurel Park Wine Market, the Wrinkled Egg in Flat Rock and Wag! Pet Boutique in downtown Hendersonville or by visiting carolinaconcertchoir.org.