“It’s the only organism that large that breathes at the same time,” said Catherine Gilk-Robinson in an interview last week. “A conductor gives and upbeat and a choir breathes.”

Gilk-Robinson is the new director of the Columbia Falls Community Choir, taking helm of the group this year after Steve Holte retired.

A Columbia Falls native,  she graduated from Columbia Falls in 1973 and her father, the always affable Ed Gilk, was a high school typing, bookkeeping and shorthand teacher.

Ed always had records playing in the house when she was growing up and Catherine started playing piano in second grade, taught by former Columbia Falls music teacher Ron Bond (who was also a longtime director of the Community Choir).

By eighth grade, Gilk-Robinson was playing piano for the Sonifers during recitals and concerts.

She would continue her musical pursuits in college, graduating from the University of Idaho in 1977 with a degree in music education. She went on to teach at schools for more than 30 years across the Northwest, though most of her career was spent in Washington state.

She went on to get a master’s degree in choral conducting from California State University Los Angeles. She retired from teaching once in 2019, but then took a stint in Santa Fe, New Mexico and retired again, sort of, because now she’s been teaching at the North Valley Music School for the past four years after moving back to Columbia Falls.

Now she teaches 48 private voice and piano lessons a week at the school.

“I love teaching,” she said, though she admits it took many years to learn to be patient.

Her teaching philosophy is simple.

“Everyone can,” she said. “We’re the only ones who stop ourselves and say can’t.”

Her subjects at the music school range in ages from 7 to 78.

She recalled just the other day when she put a piece from Bach in front of a student and she played it without thought.

“Look what you just did,” she told the woman, who happened to be 73. “We have to stop telling ourselves ‘no.’”

She takes that same tack to the community choir, as this concert has music they’ve never performed before.

She says the themes are “Love, Loss and Light” and include the whimsical “Pure Imagination” from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (the first version), “Beautiful City” from “Godspell” and the “Sound of Silence,” the hit Simon and Garfunkel tune, just to name a few.

Practices start Jan. 11 and run from 2 to 4 p.m. at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Columbia Falls. Anyone is welcome to join.

“It’s a y’all come choir,” Gilk-Robinson said. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”

The choir will practice for four months and the show is 7 p.m. April 18 at the Little Theater in Columbia Falls.