Ellen Peterson is a native of North Carolina and graduate of North Davidson High School.  She is entering her ninteenth year as a high school choral director, currently teaching at Oak Grove High School in Winston Salem, NC.  Ellen directs the adult choir and handbells at First Reformed UCC in Lexington, NC.  She received her Bachelors in Music Education from the University of North Carolina - Greensboro where she also completed the Teaching Fellows Program.  Ellen has students participate in choral festivals across the state and has also served as an adjudicator for the NC Music Educators Association Music Performance Adjudication events.  She is currently serving as secretarty of the High School Choral Board for NCMEA.  Ellen lives in Lexington with her husband, Jeremy, and son, Lucas.  She enjoys quilting and traveling in her spare time.

Lexington Choral Society co-founder, Bea McCrary, realized a longtime desire to form a women’s choral group when she and fellow co-founder, JoAnn Poston Hill, formulated their plan in the early 70s.

Bea had studied voice under Elizabeth Hamrick at Salem College. In the late 50s, she persuaded Hamrick, then retired, to come to Lexington and teach voice in her living room to high school students who wished to be classically trained.

Bea was a member of the First United Methodist Church choir for 42 years. She was known for her beautiful solos, especially her rendition of the contralto solos in Handel’s Messiah. She served as president and was a life member of the Euterpe Music Club, as well as a longtime member of the NC Symphony Society. 

In the mid 60s, she suggested to fellow members of the Lexington Woman’s Club that they present the musical Oklahoma as their annual fundraiser. This started a tradition of musical theater in Lexington and helped spearhead the creation of Lexington’s Friends of the Theater.

Although Alzheimer’s claimed her voice, her passion for beautiful music for the community that she loved lives on today through the Lexington Choral Society.