Meet Our Director and Our Accompanist

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Keri Boley is beginning her inaugural season in Fall 2024 as the director of the Salina Chorale. She has been teaching choral music at Southeast of Saline Junior and Senior High School for 15 years. 

Keri is a graduate of Newton High School, and earned a bachelor’s degree in music education at Kansas Wesleyan University, and a master’s degree in elementary music education from Wichita State University.

In addition to teaching choir and music appreciation classes, Boley also directs SES musicals, has been an adjunct faculty member at Kansas Wesleyan University, and serves as clinician and judge for area honor choirs and festivals. Boley taught choral and general music in the Ellsworth/Kanopolis school district for 17 years and is the past director of the Salina Symphony Youth Choir, formerly known as the Holiday Singers.  

Keri is excited to begin working with the Salina Chorale and acknowledges that past membership in the Chorale included people whom she has learned from and who have supported her through college and in her professional life. Ms. Boley considers it an honor to be allowed to create music with the exceptional people who participate in the Salina Chorale.

In addition to her opportunity to join us, Keri feels privileged and incredibly proud of the three young adults who call her mom; her children, Raef, Makenzie and Kyler.

Sue Will has accompanied the Salina Chorale since January 2016. 

A graduate of Bethany College with a piano performance degree, she accompanies multiple groups in the area, including Sunrise Presbyterian Church, Bethany College, Central High School and other schools of USD 305, and Sacred Heart Junior High school. 

For 39 years, she was happily married to her late husband Mike. She has two grown married daughters, two son-in-laws, and four grandsons.

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“The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind.” 

– Maria Cristina Mena

“The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air.” 

– Kenneth Miller

“There are eighty-eight keys on a piano and within that, an entire universe.”  

― James Rhodes

John Rutter wrote: "Choral music is not one of life's frills. It's something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls. You express, when you sing, your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than the sum of the parts."

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We work hard and tackle tough music together. It is in the conquering of choral compositions as a team that we find a sense of accomplishment, bringing joy to our hearts and confidence to our minds.

Most of our concert programs involve the opportunity to audition for solos, with the final decision of who will sing them being with our director, who is now Keri Boley and who also will choose the theme and music for each spring and Christmas concert.

Always, our many weeks of rehearsals pay off with audience-pleasing performances. 

[*We were privileged to sing for Bill Tuzicka for 16 years, from 2009 to spring 2024. And we look forward to exciting things to come under our new director, Keri Boley]

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Robert Shaw wrote: “The wonderful thing about choral music is that, since we’re each given a voice, and it’s native to us, we can also meet the great creative minds of the past...Anybody who can hold a scale, and wants to, can get into a choral society can sing the greatest music from day one.”