‘She was an instigator’: Alaska music pioneer Elvera Voth remembered by community she helped build

Elvera Voth, who spearheaded the evolution of Alaska music in several organizations in the late 20th century, is remembered as “an instigator” by the community she helped build.

Voth, who died at age 100 over the summer, was slated to be memorialized Saturday at a service in her home state of Kansas.

“She was an instigator of things,” local musician and instructor Wayne Toups said. “I mean, she really started a very large number of musical groups that still are quite active today.”

Voth arrived in Alaska in the early 1960s, and in 1961 was hired to conduct the Anchorage Community Chorus and prepare the Alaska Festival of Music Chorus, which was conducted by Robert Shaw.

Voth was hired as an assistant professor of music at Anchorage Community College and also directed the Alaska Methodist University Chorale. At the community college, in addition to conducting the Anchorage Community Chorus, she was conductor of the Anchorage Community College Lyric Opera Theater.

She later founded the Anchorage Boys Choir and directed multiple other groups, including the Arctic Knights Army Choir at Fort Richardson and the Sunday Afternoon Concert series at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum.

Starting in the mid-1960s, Barbara Garner performed in a number of groups directed by Voth. In those years, Alaska had plenty of opportunity and Voth took full advantage to continue to promote and advocate for musical groups and projects.

“Her skills were able to be going full bore, and she gradually increased and increased,” Garner said.

Voth was also the third director of the Anchorage Opera, and that group’s website describes her importance to its evolution: “In the mid-1960s, Elvera Voth, a determined advocate for the performing arts in Anchorage, inherited the company. Under her direction, Anchorage Opera began to blossom.”

Voth also used her platform to promote Alaska artists both nationally and internationally.

In 1976 as part of the U.S. bicentennial celebration, states were invited to perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Voth led Alaska’s contingent, which included 22 Anchorage singers and dance groups from Kodiak and Point Hope.

In 1986, Voth founded the Alaska Chamber Singers, and six years later, she was conductor for a cultural exchange to Magadan, Russia, that included the ACS and others. The weeklong exchange included performances and workshops and a joint concert of singers and musicians from both countries.

“She did things that she didn’t think she could do,” Garner said. “When she went to Magadan, she said, ‘This has to be one of the best things of my entire life.’ ”

Voth garnered many awards and commendations. In 1987, she earned an Honorary Doctor of Music degree by the University of Alaska Anchorage. Then in 1988, the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts named a rehearsal hall in her honor, the Elvera Voth Hall. She was also inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

“She was just so eager to bring music up here,” said Toups, who performed under Voth’s leadership in multiple groups. “She was instrumental, pardon the pun, in pretty much the whole music scene. She was a real pioneer.”

In 1994, at the age of 71, she returned to her home state of Kansas to live in Kansas City. There, she continued to be active in music. In 2008, she was named Educator of the Year by the Kansas Music Educators Association for her years of dedication to music and to the Arts in Prison program.