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Constance Branton (Connie) is the conductor of Whitney’s Chancel Choir and Whitney Women’s Chorale. She has been conducting at Whitney United Methodist church since 1981 and also substitutes as organist for the church when needed.
Connie was raised in Salmon, Idaho, a community of 2500 in the mountains. She spent several years on a ranch outside of Salmon riding horses. But she also gained a love of music with her piano lessons that began at age 7. In school she learned to play the clarinet and was pep band director beginning at age 14. At age 12 she was asked by the pastor of the Salmon Methodist Church to become the organist and thus began her life of serving the church through music.
Ms. Branton moved to Boise as a junior in high school where she sang in the First Methodist Church choir and studied organ with David Wehr, the music minister. She was inspired by David and his wife, Nancy, to pursue a career in church music. That led her to attend and graduate from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, with a degree in church music as an organ major. She and her husband, Donald, spent ten years serving churches full time in New Jersey, Idaho, and California, sometimes responsible for as many as 18 choirs.
In 1981 Connie began to teach music full time in the Boise Schools. She has been at South Junior High since 1987. Her choirs have won many awards and have performed for several conventions of music educators and choral conductors. She has served the music profession as an adjudicator, state and regional leader of professional organizations, and guest choral clinician. She earned her Master’s Degree in Education from Boise State University and has been active in training new teachers and developing mentoring programs for them as they start their careers.
In 1982 Connie started Whitney Women’s Chorale at the church with a handful of women who enjoyed singing and one another’s company. This choir has been singing since then and has grown to include more than 50 women ranging in age from early teens to 80+. The group has toured every summer since its inception. It has sung in churches in all of the Western States and Western Canada. The choir has toured in Alaska, New England, and made three trips to the British Isles, the latest in 2005 to Ireland, N Ireland, Wales, and England.
Connie has two grown daughters, Anna and Sarah, both of whom are teachers. Her hobbies include ballroom and country dancing, playing bridge, skiing, sewing and hand crafts, and even a bit of roller skating. Her biggest passion, other than music, is travel. She has been in every state in the US at least a couple of times, and 18 foreign countries. And she isn’t finished! Frequent flyer miles, here she comes!