When Meghan Hodges climbed up on the piano bench beside her father and began picking out harmonies when she was just three years old, it was clear that musical talent was in her DNA.

Now, Hodges serves as the accompanist for the Crown of the Continent Choir which will perform a spring concert on May 5 at the O’Shaughnessy Center. The nonprofit community choir provides free concerts and gives all donations to other nonprofit organizations in the Flathead Valley.

Randy Carspecken, board chair of the Crown of the Continent Choir, is impressed with Hodges professionalism and virtuosity.

“Last Sunday, we had our annual benefit performance at the St Ignatius Mission,” Carspecken said. “Meghan, as always, performed spectacularly despite the very old and nigh impossible-to-tune Mission piano. She is the musical foundation we all stand upon.”

The choir returned all the donations from the concert in St. Ignatius, which totaled $1,300, to the ongoing efforts to preserve the historic Mission. The group’s board of directors decides who will receive the funds.

“We always do a benefit for the Samaritan House. They’ve been raising money to build new veterans housing,” Carspecken said. “We raised $4,000 for them this year. I wish it were four million.”

HODGES GREW up in Wilmore, Kentucky, where her father was the Dean of Music at Asbury University. Her mother and brother are both musicians, as well. Hodges began taking piano lessons as a toddler and played her first recital at the age of four. 

“I just loved it but then a new love was unlocked when my dad had me start playing for church, and that’s how I got into choral accompanying,” Hodges said. “I think I was 7 when I started playing for a little church.”

She studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and for the last five years, has been the accompanist for the Crown of the Continent Choir. She said she enjoys collaborating with other musicians and called it “an amazing form of fellowship.”

“There’s just something about choirs,” Hodges said. “Give me a good gospel song everyday, that’s really my favorite kind of music to play, other than classical.”

Hodges’ parents moved to the Flathead Valley in 2005 and spent years encouraging their daughter to join them in Big Sky country.

“I came out in 2011 to visit them and was just blown away and felt that sense of comfort that you get … the mountains are supporting you and making you feel tiny in a really good way,” she said. 

The comfort of the mountains along with the support she received from the choir members helped Hodges recover from a string of unfortunate illnesses and injuries: a car accident, three tick-borne diseases and an adventurous but unfortunate first date whitewater rafting.

Thankfully, Hodges is healthy and strong today and is thankful for her relationship with the choir, as it lifted her up when she was feeling low.

“Just in the last year or two I'm kind of experiencing what it is to be a healthy, functioning, pain-free person for the first time since I can remember, and it’s just incredible,” she said. “This choir, they were just a lifeline for me when I was going through it.

“It was just phenomenal to be able to make music with people,” she added. “It's a really healing thing. Especially to sing together as a group.”

    Meghan Hodges, accompanist for the Crown of the Continent Choir. (Photo provided)
  

    The Crown of the Continent Choir