After nearly 50 years of leading Aroostook County’s largest community chorus, Dan Ladner, an adored figure in the region’s arts scene, has retired as director of the Caribou Choral Society.
Ladner, who lives in Presque Isle and will be 89 in May, cited health issues as his reason for stepping down, but said he will still try to sing with the group in its twice-yearly concerts.
“He’s greatly beloved. A lot of people joined it so they could get the chance to sing with Dan,” choral society president Steve Burden said.
Ladner will be succeeded by Mari-Jo Hedman, the music director of Fort Fairfield’s MSAD 20, who has served as an accompanist for the society since 1991, Burden said.
The roots of the Caribou Choral Society trace back to 1976, when it was formed as the Caribou Bicentennial Chorus to help celebrate America’s 200th birthday.
At the end of that year, the society decided it did not want to disband, so it formed a committee to continue to sing under a new name and asked Ladner to direct the performances.
“I heard them perform that year and I thought, ‘Oh, they’re a wonderful group,’” Ladner said. “It isn’t often that you hear a large group. You have little church choirs and high school choirs and so forth, but to hear a big chorus was really thrilling to me.”
That year, he organized a last-minute Christmas concert full of music that he “begged, borrowed and stole,” he said.
Almost 50 years later, the concert series, which is split between performances in Presque Isle and Caribou, continues to be a staple for the group and a holiday tradition for locals. Over the years the group has included voices from all over Aroostook County and neighboring New Brunswick, Canada.
“In all those years we built up an audience of local people who like choral music, and we’ve got a very good reputation — I say modestly — of probably the finest singers in the central Aroostook area,” Ladner said.
The choral society typically holds two concerts a year, the Christmas performance and another in the spring. Before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the group to a halt for two years, it would also sing in the St. John Valley and had even performed at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Edmundston, New Brunswick — a landmark so prominent it stands out on the horizon across the border in Madawaska.
Ladner revived the group in 2022 following the pandemic, and it has continued to pack Aroostook venues and churches since. It had 50 singers take part in its concerts in December.
“I think that the group will continue,” he said. “The enthusiasm, it’s wonderful. And we all feel like a family.”
In 2023, Ladner retired after 72 years as the organist at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Presque Isle. He served in that role and as the choir director at Grant Memorial United Methodist Church in the city as well.
For more than 40 years, he taught in Presque Isle and Caribou high schools and directed and starred in musical theater. Ladner helped launch the Presque Isle Community Players and Shipmates Playhouse, the high school’s theater group. He also directed the Caribou Performing Arts Center.
“I’ve directed them and I’ve performed in them and I’ve loved every minute of it,” Ladner said of his background in musicals. “They don’t write many parts for old men anymore,” he joked.