Cathy Reitz: Sharing Music with Eau Claire

EAU CLAIRE — Anyone who has spent time in the Eau Claire music scene knows Cathy Reitz. Between her bright red hair and infectious laugh, Reitz is easy to pick out in a crowd — and as the lead singer of two bands, co-owner of a music business and conductor of a local choir, she is in a lot of crowds.

In fact, Reitz is involved in so much, she brought a list to her interview to help keep track of everything. But Reitz can sum up what she does and who she is pretty simply.

“If I had one line that described me and my professional life, I would say I share music,” Reitz said.

Whether teaching, performing or conducting, Reitz has spent the past four decades sharing music with Eau Claire. In 1981, she began her career in music education. Originally, she planned to only teach for a few years, but eventually she decided to stay.

“After 10 years I decided, I was getting the hang of [teaching] so I’ll do a little more,” Reitz said with a chuckle. “After 32 years I thought: that’s probably enough.”

Reitz enjoys seeing how her former students have grown up. She recounted when one young man approached her after a performance and sang her a rendition of a song about a potato he remembered from her class.

“I have no recollection of the potato song. It must have been something I made up on the fly,” Reitz laughed. “It was so much fun because… somewhere in the back of this person’s mind, there’s this little memory that makes him happy. I feel like that’s what we should all do: try to give everyone a little memory that makes them happy.”

During her time as a teacher, Reitz worked with kids as young as kindergarteners all the way up through high schoolers. Reitz admits, though, her favorite age group to work with was middle schoolers. She thinks teaching middle schoolers helped prepare her for another way she went on to share music — conducting a choir for people with memory loss.

Reitz has been the artistic and musical director of Stand In The Light Memory Choir, a community choir for people with early to mid stage dementia and a care partner, since it was founded in 2016.

“We have a warped perception of what early to mid stage dementia is,” Reitz said. “There’s really so much living for most people with early diagnosis to do, so this is an opportunity for people to get together and share and sing.”

When people begin to lose their memory, sometimes they lose their inhibitions, Reitz said. She finds beauty in working with people who speak their mind and wear their heart on their sleeve, something both middle schoolers and those experiencing dementia tend to do.

This will be Reitz’s last year conducting the choir. Moving forward, she will work more on the organizational side, promoting the choir and Kate Larson will take over as the musical and artistic director.

This won’t be Reitz’ first time supporting music from behind the scenes. She has long been involved in organizing the Chippewa Valley Jazz and Art Fair by helping recruit local musicians to showcase during the event.

She is also involved in the Eau Claire music scene through her husband’s instrument repair shop, Cool Winds. The shop has been open for a decade, but it just became independent earlier this year. As a result, Reitz has gotten more involved on the business end of things.

However, for all the ways she shares music, Reitz is probably most well known for performing. She is the lead vocalist in two jazz bands that she founded with her husband: Cathy Reitz & 7Swing and the Cathy Reitz Trio.

Both bands had a booked and busy summer with Cathy Reitz & 7Swing headlining a Sounds Like Summer concert in Phoenix Park. Reitz describes the bands as her “bliss” and said her main goal is to “put a little jazz in your heart.”

Reitz loves listening to and singing all kinds of music, so her bands play music spanning genres and decades, although she admits she has a soft spot for ballads from the 1930s to the 1960s.

When she’s not performing with her bands, Reitz sings with the Chippewa Valley Jazz Orchestra. During the summer, she and her husband travel to perform with the La Crosse Jazz Orchestra.

Despite the number of performances she has done, Reitz is still grateful for every opportunity to sing.

In 2008, she developed polyps on her vocal cords that prevented her from singing and required surgery to fix. There was a risk that the surgery would be unsuccessful or even damage her voice further. After surgery, she was forbidden from making a sound for 10 days and although the treatment was successful, she still had to relearn how to talk and sing.

“I decided after [surgery], I would always be grateful when I could sing, whether it was for six people at a nursing home or for 1,000 people at Riverside Park,” Reitz said.

Reitz plans to keep performing and sharing music in all forms with Eau Claire for the foreseeable future.

“I’ll [perform] as long as I can and as long as it’s fun,” Reitz said of her upcoming plans. “And I just don’t see an end to the fun.”

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