Director of choirs Kathie Brekke and the Moorhead High Carolers, who’ll have performed nearly 75 times by Christmas. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)

When the Moorhead High School Carolers bring the season to life every December, they end each performance on the same high note: The 40 teens, dressed in Victorian gowns and morning coats, invite their audience to join them in a heartfelt rendition of “Silent Night.”

And Kathie Brekke, their director, always reacts the same: “Even now, after all these years, it never fails to bring me to tears.”

This month, as the choristers wrap up some 75 performances, those tears have especially personal meaning. After 13 years as their director, she plans to wrap up her teaching career at the end of the school year.

“The time is just right for a fresh start,” she reflects. “New school … new director … new ideas … new energy. It’s important to make a break so a new director can come in to make new memories in a new space.”

Leading the community’s most-loved holiday performing group is just one part of Kathie’s role at MHS. As director of choirs, she has detailed her philosophy with thousands of secondary students, always striving to pass on her passion — “how wonderful it is to perform good music for good people.

“I love,” she says, “teaching kids how to give their music away. That’s what instills joy.”

The love of music … the joy of sharing. That’s the spirit that has powered her teaching and her own performances since she was the tiniest sister on stage with mother Dee Hilde’s dance band, once the number one group in the Twin Cities. As the youngest of six musical siblings, she was joining them and her parents onstage before she was old enough for kindergarten.

Her mother, Dee Hilde, led a series of wildly popular bands through the 1950s and 1960. After the family moved to Detroit Lakes during her teens, Kathie graduated from high school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at Minnesota State University. The family band dispersed in the 1990s as siblings married and started their own families.

Education called her. “I wrote my first syllabus in 1991 for a class in commercial keyboards at MSUM,” she remembers. But her first full-time position was teaching music to fifth- and sixth-graders at Robert Asp School. There she met Harley Sommerfeld and Dewey Possehl — “wonderful mentors who took me in as a young jazz musician.”

After half a dozen years there, she moved to the college level, dividing her time between MSUM and Concordia College teaching vocal jazz and commercial keyboards. She was also a worship leader at her church, Triumph Lutheran Brethren.

Then she heard that Moorhead High had an opening in choral music. “What really intrigued me was their emphasis on investing attention in the carolers to assure they’d maintain their place in the community,” she remembers. Formed in 1958, the caroling tradition was already more than 50 years old. She happily stepped into that role.

Since then, some 400 young men and women have worn the long, jewel-colored gowns and white muffs or dapper morning coats and top hats as they’ve won as prominent a place in Moorhead Christmas festivities as Santa Claus himself. “I’ve loved my kids,” Kathie says with genuine fondness. “We all love the songs. But I can’t think of one note I’ve taught them that’s more important than the joy of sharing their gifts with others. I hope every student I’ve had will keep doing that forever. Music is the salt of the earth.”

Music is also the everpresent theme of the rest of Kathie’s life. Her own family is as deeply rooted there as the one in which she grew up. Husband Shawn directed bands at Ben Franklin Junior High School for years; he now teaches STEM classes there and plays trumpet in her group, the 42nd Street Jazz . Son Dan is a professional musician who divides his time between Fargo-Moorhead, Nashville and other venues.

Though her teaching will eventually end, the music that thrills her will continue and perhaps pick up the pace. Her own group, the 42nd Street Jazz Band, celebrates its 20th anniversary of playing every Thursday night at the Delta by Marriott. She brought the professional musicians together back when the hotel opened its doors as the Ramada Plaza. Kathie is the vocalist; its musicians include Kent Karch on upright bass; Matt Seidel, guitar; Joe Riewer, drums; Russ Peterson, saxophone; and her husband Shawn on trumpet.

Her beloved summer gigs, too, show no sign of slowing down. She directs and performs in thrice-weekly performances at Jasper’s Jubilee Theatre in Park Rapids, which began as a reunion of Dee Hilde’s family band.

“When Mom found out she had cancer in 2004, she had a dream. She wanted to get all of us back together again,” Kathie recalls. That planted the seed that lives on as Jasper’s. “My sister Lynette Guida and her late husband Don built a music hall up in the lake country. We’ve been spending every summer together ever since.” Their mother lived long enough to perform 24 shows with all four generations of her family, including her great-grandchildren.

Meanwhile, Jasper’s has become a summer staple. The extended family presents a variety show three times a week from June through early September featuring relatives and friends. Eighty-six-year-old Darlene Rolle is the featured comedian in the persona of Auntie Kreamsaugen. Lynette’s grandchildren take the stage, too; the youngest is 4, about the same age as Kathie when she began singing with her family.

Kathie has a few more ideas on tap for her newly free time post-retirement: Recording again, for one, and perhaps taking her band to Florida or Arizona for winter performances in a more mellow clime. The 42nd Street Jazz Band continue performing around this area, too, with special shows like their tribute to Peggy Lee and their history of jazz.

But this month, it’s still all about the MHS Carolers. She is planning a reunion of all those who’ve worn the gowns and top hats at Trinity Lutheran Church on the night before the night before Christmas, Dec. 23. She’s hoping veterans of the group will come together that night to raise their voices together in lusty song.

“I’ve spent so much of my life watching joy on the faces of people who are singing together,” she says. “I can’t think of a better high note to end with.”

For more information on the Caroler Reunion, search “Moorhead High Choirs and Carolers” on Facebook.