After 116 years, Wenatchee’s Apollo Club is still looking for the next voice

WENATCHEE — When Thom Kokenge arrived in Wenatchee two years ago, he was looking for something.

He had moved to the area that May, left his job with Northwest Public Broadcasting a few months later and found himself thinking about something he had missed: singing.

Then he saw a downtown flyer for the Apollo Club.

“I was looking at, like, what makes you feel better?” Kokenge said. “And it’s singing.”

He followed the QR code, found his way to the first rehearsal in September and joined a Wenatchee institution that had already been singing for more than a century.

Now he is its president.

Founded in 1910, the Apollo Club has survived 116 years, interrupted during World War II and again during the COVID-19 pandemic. The club disbanded in fall 1941 as the war drew away members and was revived in fall 1945.

Along the way, Apollo singers have performed at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle and Expo ’74 in Spokane, helped establish what became the International Choral Festival and, in 2006, became the first organization to receive the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center’s Living Treasure Award.

Kokenge sees his role now as helping make sure another generation follows.

“Here I am as a caretaker of this,” he said. “How can I move it forward, move it forward in a positive way?”

That effort begins with correcting what may be the most intimidating misconception about joining a choir with more than a century of history behind it.

There is no audition.

“You just show up and join,” Kokenge said.

A new member sings for the music director only to determine where his voice fits within the choir. Members do not have to read music or arrive with years of formal vocal training.

“All you need to do is carry a tune,” Kokenge said. “You don’t have to read music. You don’t have to know what a note is.”

The club rehearses from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays during a season that runs from September through May. Its 2026-27 season begins Sept. 8, making the start of the season an especially easy time for prospective members to walk through the door.

Kokenge would particularly like some of those new members to be young.

The club’s membership crosses occupations and backgrounds, from recent college graduates to retirees, but it has increasingly become, as Kokenge put it, “a group of men of an age.”

At 59, Kokenge estimated himself near the younger side of the membership.

“We’re looking for more younger voices,” he said.

His recruiting pitch is uncomplicated: If you sang in high school, sing in church, sing along with the radio or simply miss making music with other people, come try it.

“If you like singing,” Kokenge said, “and you can spare four nights a month.”

That openness does not mean the Apollo Club treats the music casually.

Kokenge remembers arriving at his first rehearsal unsure what an organization with virtually no barrier to entry would sound like. Then the club began singing “Roll On Columbia,” and his skepticism disappeared.

“I felt it,” he said.

The repertoire has ranged well beyond what audiences might imagine when they picture a century-old men’s chorus. The club has performed traditional material and songs such as “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor,” but it has also tackled music from “The Book of Boba Fett.”

The latter was not a novelty throwaway.

“It was difficult,” Kokenge said. “It was not an easy song to sing.”

That willingness to move between tradition and contemporary culture matters to him, particularly if the Apollo Club hopes to reach younger singers and new audiences.

“If we’re going to try to appeal to an audience, a wide-ranging audience, and also try to encourage younger people to come and be in the choir, hey, what kind of songs are they singing?” Kokenge said.

The club begins this season with a new music director, Dawn McCormick, who will select the repertoire and lead the singers through rehearsals and performances.

For all the attention paid to what happens onstage, however, Kokenge argues that performance is not actually the Apollo Club’s first purpose.

Its members eat together. They hold gatherings outside rehearsals. A planned summer picnic this year had to be moved indoors because of wildfire smoke, so roughly 20 members simply shifted to Godfather’s Pizza. Someone had already made pies, so the pies came too.

“That’s the camaraderie,” Kokenge said.

And that, he said, is part of why he thinks of the Apollo Club as both an arts organization and a service organization.

“We serve the community,” he said. “With music.”

The club’s mission puts the singers themselves first, giving men a place to assemble and sing for enjoyment, social connection and emotional well-being. Developing their vocal skills and performing for the public follow from that.

The mission extends beyond the singers, too.

The Apollo Club has established an endowment with the Community Foundation of North Central Washington to support local students pursuing music education. Kokenge said the club awards two scholarships of at least $500 to students planning to study music.

Its search for younger singers also brings the Apollo Club unusually close to its beginnings.

Four Wenatchee High School students formed a male vocal quartet in 1910. That same year, the four became part of the charter membership of the newly formed Apollo Club.

More than a century later, Kokenge is again looking toward younger singers to help carry the organization forward.

Somewhere in the Wenatchee Valley may be a teenager singing in a school choir, a church singer who has never considered joining another ensemble, a former choir kid who stopped singing years ago or simply a man who knows he can carry a tune.

After 116 years, the invitation remains remarkably simple.

“Do you like to sing?” Kokenge said. “Come on down.”

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media