Visionary thinker has passion for music

He is utterly in charge, greeting members of the choir as they arrive, coordinating adjustments to the risers, smiling, joking, scolding, talking with a latecomer on the cell phone, selling tickets, writing something on his clipboard, reviewing the draft of the program to be distributed at the concert, and all the while thinking about several upcoming engagements, the need to stay healthy and in good voice, the many tasks yet to be done.

'Show me that diva posture!' he tells one woman. 'We sent ya that a loooong time ago,' he says to another, in a Gullah accent. 'I'm only doing a million things in a day,' he tells a visitor.

Having thrown into the air an armful of balls, Lee Pringle sits in the first pew at Citadel Square Baptist Church working diligently to keep them there. It is what he does. Then, 10 or 15 minutes after rehearsal was supposed to start, Pringle announces that the rainy weather has held them up long enough; it's time to start.

Director Nathan Nelson positions his music stand, and the members of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Spiritual Ensemble, a group newly formed by Pringle, the fulfillment of a long-standing vision, assemble on the risers. Pringle takes his position in the center of the first row. The choristers focus intently on their conductor and begin to sing.

In the Lord,

my soul's been anchored,

in the Lord ...

Pringle is the son of Buster Pringle, who is the son of Moses, who was the son of Isom, who was the son of Skipio, who was the son of Middleton Pringle (a white man), who was the son of William Bull Pringle, who inherited a plantation along the Ashley River from his father, John Julius Pringle.

The property, which came to be known as Runnymede, was sold by William Bull in 1862. Some of the blacks working on the plantation made their way to the Ridgeville area after the Civil War and settled in Pringletown.

Lee Pringle grew up singing at Mount Pisgah AME Church in Pringletown. Like so many others, he got his start in the

Sunbeam Choir and, little by little over the years, worked his way to bigger choirs.

Rural Pringletown didn't have much to offer children in the way of entertainment - the Pringle family lived on a dirt road - so Lee would watch a lot of television, he said. 'Gunsmoke.' 'Bonanza.' He was more interested in the soundtrack than in the stories, fascinated by the music an orchestra could make, the way the strings sang and the brass bellowed on their way to the big, exciting finale.

The music he heard from the little speakers of his TV indicated to Pringle the Great Beyond.

'I was the renegade,' he said, 'the dreamer who didn't want to live on a dirt road in Pringletown.'

His parents were rooted, traditional, religious. His brother, Rickie, was content staying close to the family and setting modest, achievable goals.

At 16, Lee graduated from Cross High School. At 17, he enlisted in the Navy, becoming a telecommunications specialist. His first assignment was in the radio room of the Carl Vinson, a 92,000-ton, 1,092-foot-long supercarrier. He spent eight years, most of the 1980s, in the Navy, the first four on the West Coast, the last four on the East Coast, based in Norfolk and Charleston.

'I was a damned good sailor, I was sharp,' he said. 'They didn't want me to leave.'

But he didn't much like serious formality of the East Coast after four less strict years out West ('That place is groovy,' Pringle said.) and certainly didn't want the Pentagon job he was offered in 1987.

So after a stint with the admiral's staff in charge of all submarines on the East Coast, Pringle decided to apply what he learned in the Navy - an attention to detail - to the corporate world. He joined the insurance company MetLife in 1989.

Goin' shout an' pray

an' never stop,

until I reach

the mountain top ...

He was a good salesman, and an effective manager. He was promoted by his company and became responsible for the Southeast region. He married in 1989 and divorced in 1992. Before long, Pringle was a 'home office' manager in Charleston, working with the folks at headquarters. He had become a 'life product specialist.'

In 2001, he switched to TIAA-CREF, a financial services company that administers retirement and annuity plans, mostly for people in academic, research, medical, cultural and nonprofit fields. Again, he excelled.

It was during this corporate phase of his life that Pringle launched the CSO Gospel Choir.

The idea for a choir that concentrated on indigenous music and included a mix of blacks and whites was Wally Seinsheimer's. Then serving on the Charleston Symphony board, Seinsheimer had travelled to Georgia to hear the Atlanta Symphony's Gospel Christmas. He loved the music, but he loved the implications more, he said.

'I thought, this might help in a small way with race relations in South Carolina,' he said.

So Seinsheimer talked with Darryl Edwards, then CSO executive director, and Pringle, then serving as chairman of the Community Partners Committee, and in December 1998, the three men returned to Atlanta.

'I was blown away,' Pringle said. 'We left on a high.'

A year went by. The symphony was struggling financially. But then some money came in: $5,000, to set up the choir. Pringle was off and running. He would assemble a chorus with 20 singers. Eight candidates applied for a place on the podium. Vivian E. Jones got the job, and led the group until 2007. (In July last year, Sandra Singleton Barnhardt took the helm as music director, replacing Glenn R. Nixon, who had filled in as acting director.)

Choir members were enthusiastic, talented but inexperienced in the ways of professional music ensembles and unfamiliar with the requirements of unions, Pringle said. He spent much of the first year teaching rehearsal protocol.

Soon, a publicist was hired. In 2001, the choir officially became part of the symphony organization. Pringle, who was singing in the CSO Concert Choir at the time, used the symphony's tax ID number to open a bank account at First Union. Then he began to collect modest dues from choir members. Then he helped establish bylaws for the group.

Charleston Symphony Executive Director Jan Newcomb said Pringle is a strategic thinker and visionary. Music Director David Stahl called him a smart businessman and an inspiration.

'He's just been a real positive force for bringing people together and bringing music of all kinds to a wider audience,' Stahl said. 'And he sings tenor!'

Seinsheimer said he is thrilled with the Gospel Choir. It preserves a priceless repertoire of folk music, adds a dimension to the symphony organization that is no longer exclusively in the business of presenting European classical music and attracts a more diverse audience.

'It's these little things that will make a difference in the long haul on how we'll all get along,' Seinsheimer said.

Are you anchored?

Oh yes! Yes, I'm anchored,

my soul's been anchored

in the Lord ...

In 2007, Pringle decided to take a year off. He quit his job. He traveled through Europe and visited friends in the U.S. He took a break from organizing choir rehearsals and concerts, and from managing corporate relations. But the lure of file folders and business communiques was just too strong.

'At the core, I'm a corporate guy,' Pringle said.

So last year, he was back at it, this time starting a company called Buster-Elsie Productions and beginning to plan for two big projects: the Charleston International Festival of Choirs, a series of concerts that wraps up today, and the formation and promotion of the CSO Spiritual Ensemble, an outgrowth of the Gospel Choir that's focused on presenting spirituals and other music born of the African-American experience.

And he's helping his brother, who is chairman of Mount Pisgah AME Church's building committee, with a summer fund drive.

Homecoming 2009 is scheduled for July 20-26. It will feature camp meetings, a bazaar, fish fry and tour of Middleton Plantation, which sits along the same stretch of river that once included Runnymede, the 19th-century Pringle family property, where slaves once sang in sorrow, longing and joy.

The Spiritual Ensemble debuted in February, then offered a well-received Palm Sunday concert. This weekend, the group participated in the Festival of Choirs, one of Pringle's latest ventures. On May 30, the singers will offer a 5 p.m. concert at Mount Zion AME Church, part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Spiritual Emsemble Music Director Nelson said he shares Pringle's vision to promote a small ensemble dedicated to the music developed by slaves on Southern plantations, and some of the musical forms that evolved from the spiritual. The goal, Nelson said, is 'preserving authenticity.'

The ensemble is made up of singers from the Gospel Choir, which tours Europe this summer. Nelson, who is a vocal teacher at Windsor Hill Elementary School, said he will take charge of repertoire while detail-oriented Pringle manages all aspects of production. 'You have to get out of bed two or three hours early just to keep up with his pace,' Nelson said of his collaborator.

Pringle, ever the organizer, is thinking about a return to the corporate world. He's ready to get even busier. He's ready to throw more balls into the air. But new corporate duties will never distract him from the purpose and satisfaction he finds in his musical pursuits, especially the Spiritual Ensemble.

'The historical significance of the Spiritual Ensemble is why I'm so passionate about it,' he said. 'In this age of the iPod, no one is really preserving that history.'

What better place than Charleston to offer it to the world?