From Small Things, Big Things Grow

From humble beginnings as a few friends with a shared passion for singing sprang a more than 60-70-person vocal assemblage poised to kick off its 23rd year of entertaining audiences in Collier County and beyond. 

Voices of Naples is a chorus comprised of members from Marco to southern Lee County that ushers in its 2025-26 Season Autumn Concert with a Nov. 23 program entitled "Songs of Peace and Hope." The performance will be held at the First Presbyterian Church of Naples, located at 250 Sixth Street South.  

The nonprofit organization offers a choral music stylistically diverse approach as a series of concerts during the tourist season to raise money for its college vocal scholarship program. The chorus has donated $98,000 in scholarships for approximately 40 students since its founding in 2003.  

“We're very proud of that,” said Mariellen LeMasters, one of the chorus’ founders and president of its board of directors. “That's our main reason for singing, honestly. We're not out there to make money. We only have two ticketed concerts, and three of them have free will offerings. Our ticket prices are very reasonable. I mean, where can you go for a concert for $25 at the door or $20 in advance? Our prices have stayed low, and we generally have a very nice turnout.”  

December will see Voices of Naples perform its Christmas Concert program twice: at 7:00 PM, December 8, at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, located at 777 Mooring Line Drive, Naples; and at 7:00 PM, December 11, at Grace Lutheran Church, 860 Banyan Boulevard, Naples. The season concludes with the annual Singing for Scholarships Concert, set for March 8, at First Presbyterian Church of Naples.  

Brice Gerlach, the chorus’ artistic and choral director, tries to create a theme for each concert program, and he discussed his plans for the “Songs of Hope and Peace” song list.  

“The first half of the concert really fits that theme, with pieces like “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” a piece called "Dona Nobis Pacem (Latin for ‘give us peace’) and a piece called “Hope” from a poem by Emily Dickinson.  

“We also do a wide variety (of music), so I'm including a few other styles: two country pieces. One is a Willie Nelson favorite, “You Are Always on My Mind,” and then a medley of pieces of by Johnny Cash, “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire.” We're ending with spirituals, “Deep River,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”   

The program closer will be the patriotic piece, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” 

“Our chorus has been offered the opportunity to attend a concert in Washington, D.C. over Memorial Day weekend, where we'll be part of a mass choir of about 400 or 450 singers singing in the Kennedy Center,” noted Gerlach, who is also director of music ministries for First Presbyterian Church of Naples. “It’s an all-patriotic program, so at the end of the concert in November, I thought we would make people aware of that with that one piece. In January, we're going to perform the all-patriotic concert with the music that we will be singing in Washington, D.C.” 

He described Voices of Naples as a “true community chorus” comprised of people from all walks of life. “Some were professional musicians, some are retirees from various jobs, and they all come together for the love of music,” he added. 

Gerlach has been with Voice of Naples for three years. The post allows him to utilize his academic background in choral conducting in a broader context, compared to his work with the church.  

“It's a real love of mine,” said the now-retired, former longtime assistant director of the Naples Philharmonic Chorus. “I love what I do with the church choir. But this is different because we do a mixture of sacred and secular music, so we get to do quite a wide variety with the Voices of Naples. I really do enjoy that.” 

Voice of Naples’s creation stems from a seven-person conversation that occurred during Super Bowl Sunday, 2002. Each of the close friends was looking for a group to sing with after their memberships with their church choir had ended. That discussion inspired LeMasters and her husband, Lee, to rectify the situation.   

“At the time, he was affiliated with the Civil Air Patrol here in Naples,” Mariellen LeMasters said of her late husband. “He had an opportunity to use a couple big rooms at the airport, which gave us a place to plan to sing.” 

The initial gathering of choral enthusiasts included the participants in that initial conversation, a piano, and some donated sheet music. From that humble beginning, things quickly grew beyond what anyone anticipated, as word of mouth caused interest to swell.  

“We didn't expect it to be a full-fledged chorus, but we found out that there were a lot more people that wanted to get together and sing, basically for fun, to start with,” said Mariellen LeMasters. “It ended up being a much more established group over the years. When we first decided to do this, we just said, ‘Come one, come all,’ and they just came out of the woodwork.” 

Scholarships are awarded to high school seniors from Collier and Lee counties, along with previous winners, to study vocal music in college. Two scholarships have been awarded for the 2025-2026 academic year. Both recipients are from Collier County. Lance Emmert is studying musical theater performance at the University of Miami. Abigail Young is majoring in the same field at Belmont University in Nashville.  

Reduced scholarship assistance is also being provided to five former recipients to help them complete their studies. Aside from the financial component, the students are also assigned a Voices of Naples mentor who stays in touch with them and assists them with their academic pursuits. 

Cameron Stokka, vice-president of the board of directors, said that school music teachers and private instructors are notified each fall about the scholarship program and the application process, which includes the youths submitting an essay telling about themselves and why they sing, as well as an audition before the organization’s board.  

“We want to support students who go to college to study in fields that have vocal music as a focus,” he said. “Some of our students are performance majors, some are theater majors. We have a student who was a songwriting major, and there are just so many different areas of music. We can follow these students as they go through their years and hear what concerns they have, who got to have a solo, and all the other things they experience.” 

For more information about Voices of Naples and the group’s performance schedule, please visit voicesofnaples.org.