Ginger Colla

1937 - 2021

Ginger Colla
July 8, 1937 - December 9, 2021
Modesto, California - Dr. Virginia "Ginger" Covert Colla
Ginger was born in Oklahoma City, OK on July 8, 1937, and her family moved to Joplin, MO shortly after her birth. She spent most of her first twelve years in the Midwest before her family relocated to Rosemead, CA, where her father started a tile contracting business. Ginger was inspired by and excelled at writing, physical education and music in her early years. When Ginger went to Rosemead High School, her high school choir teacher changed her life. Jane Skinner Hardester was a well- known, very accomplished choral conductor and teacher. While singing for Jane, Ginger decided that she wanted to follow in Jane's footsteps and become a choral teacher as well. Jane was Ginger's first mentor, and they remained close friends until Jane Hardester passed away. Ginger felt blessed to be able to study with many of the finest choral educators of her time, including Charles Hirt (USC), Howard Swan (Occidental College), Helmut Rilling (Germany), and Harold Decker (University of Illinois).
After completing her undergraduate degree in music education at UOP in Stockton, CA, Ginger began her teaching career in spring 1960 at Havenscourt Junior High School in East Oakland, where she taught general music and chorus. However, her dream had always been to teach at the high school level, and she soon realized that goal when she became the choral music teacher at Modesto High School in 1961. Ginger was privileged to continue a tradition of choral excellence that had been established by her predecessors, Eleanor Haines and Robert Wing, who remained her colleagues at Thomas Downey High School and Davis High School in Modesto. These were heady days in Modesto, with each school boasting a full choral and instrumental program. Ginger was able to mount performances of major works with chorus and orchestra every year: Vivaldi's Gloria, Bach's Magnificat, Haydn's Little Organ Mass, Handel's Messiah, Puccini's Gloria, and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. She also conducted fully-staged productions of Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, Orff's Carmina Burana, The King and I, Unsinkable Molly Brown and My Fair Lady. During her tenure at Modesto High, her choirs were featured numerous times at state and regional music education conventions, appeared via competitive auditions at the Junior Bach Festival in Berkeley, and were invitation to perform the Rossini Stabat Mater in San Francisco with professional soloists and members of the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Giovanni Camiani. Ginger also was instrumental in developing an innovative Music, Art and Humanities curriculum, including music, art, drama, dance and literature, which was team-taught by five fine arts teachers at MHS.
In 1970 Ginger completed a Master of Arts in Choral Music at Occidental College, and that fall was appointed Director of Choral Activities at San Diego Mesa College, where she taught choral music, voice and humanities for 14 years. While at Mesa College, Ginger met her husband, Richard, and they were married in October 1981. Rich is also a vocal/choral musician and together they worked on many musical projects throughout the years.
Ginger went on to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Illinois. She served as Director of Vocal and Choral Studies for 2 years at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and for 13 years at California State University, Stanislaus. While at CSUS, in addition to conducting choirs, she also taught music education courses and supervised student teachers.
Following her retirement (she preferred to call it "rechargement") from academia in 1999, Ginger founded a Kindermusik studio at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Modesto, where she taught music, movement and literature to infants through seven-year-olds in four levels. Eventually she moved her studio to her home and until 2019 continued to teach Kindermusik, during which time she also was a part-time instructor of Music Appreciation at Modesto Junior College. In addition, she also co-developed and team-taught the Gallo Center's Creation Station summer arts program for children.
Ginger had been involved in church and community music organizations all of her life. She sang in the chancel choir, directed the women's ensemble and played in the handbell ensemble at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Modesto, where Rich was Minister of Music and Worship. She toured Europe twice as a member of the California Choral Company and also sang for a number of years with the Modesto Symphony Orchestra Chorus.
In 1989 Dr. Colla was named Outstanding Choral Music Educator by the California Music Educators Association. In 2004 she received the Howard S. Swan Award from the California chapter of the American Choral Directors Association in recognition of her career of excellence in the choral art.
All of her life, Ginger loved writing. She wrote stories for her Kindermusik students for their "story time" segment in the class and recently had adapted and published one of the stories she created for children; the book is called The Christmas Elf. Ginger's other great love in writing was poetry. She called herself a "sprinter" as a poet for she would write when she was inspired, then go for a period of perhaps months without writing at all, only to be inspired to pick up her pen and resume writing. However, during Covid she began to write poetry on a regular basis. In 2021 Ginger published A Poet's Life: Memories, Moods and Reflections--a collection of her work--and had written enough poetry to both complete another book yet to be published and begin creating at least one more book. Ginger continued with her writing until the last few days of her life.
Throughout her life, Ginger enjoyed travel, golf and biking. She and Rich founded a bike club of friends called The Out Spokin' Bike Club, which usually met to ride once a month and also went on longer bike tours in the summer months. Ginger organized the rides and Rich was the ride leader out on the road. The two of them also enjoyed many fun biking vacations together, sometimes with friends, in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria and England, plus many places in the United States.
A Celebration of Life service will be held in January, but the details have not been finalized at this time.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that a donation be made in Ginger's memory to the American Heart Association.