Mike Powers is one of those fortunate people who knows he has spent his life doing exactly what he was meant to do.

"This has been a great way to spend a life. I've loved every minute of it," Powers said.

With the Portage High School Choral Cabaret this weekend, Powers is preparing for his final spotlit bow. After 34 years as a music teacher in the Portage School District, he's retiring at the end of the school year.

"I guess I'm going to retire because I can," Powers, 56, said with a laugh.

A native of Baraboo, Powers began his music career at St. John's Lutheran School in Baraboo, where he learned to read music as a boy soprano. After completing high school in Baraboo, Powers attended the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County for two years before graduating with a bachelor's degree in music education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975.

Powers has spent his entire professional career in the Portage School District, the last 26 at Portage High School.

"I'm just about to the point of having grandchildren (of former students)," he said.

His program includes the junior and senior concert choir, a women's choir, along with swing and jazz choirs, music theater and music theory classes.

About 150 students are participating in his program this year. When combining choir and band, as much as one-third of the school's population is involved in music, Powers said.

For 1998 grad Lindsey Nichols-Masaki, choir was the highlight of her high school years.

A 2004 graduate in vocal performance at Edgewood College in Madison, she is beginning graduate school as a speech pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall.

"He was super-positive and supportive," said Nichols-Masaki, who continued to sing through college. "He kept everybody really engaged and enjoying the process. I've had very few other experiences like that."

Ironically, Powers never had a high school choir experience himself during his years at Baraboo High School.

"I had great fun in high school band," Powers said.

He played French horn well enough to win a place as first horn in the state honors band, and in college wanted to become a band leader. That was, until the professors at University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County changed his mind, convincing him to consider voice.

"I really appreciated the honesty," Powers said.

A life of music

Musicals and music have remained the center of Powers' life. Not only has he directed a total of 25 productions at Portage High School, where he is also the drama and music director, but he has contributed to the musical fabric of the area. He has performed in small jazz combos during the summer in Wisconsin Dells, performed and directed community musicals in Portage and Baraboo, led music at Portage United Methodist Church for 35 years and wrote and performed for events like the opening of the Zona Gale Center, now the Portage Center for the Arts.

Music also brought him together with Holly Powers, his wife of 35 years. The couple met at the university in Baraboo, where she admits to admiring him from afar as they participated in a performance together.

"He's got a wonderful voice," Holly said.

He's a firm believer that music, along with other arts, is a necessary component to education, and complements the intellectual and athletic sides of the school system in the United States.

"I think there's more to a person than just muscles and brain," Powers said.

There is also the emotion or spirit side of a person, which the arts address.

"Music handles things in a way that really transcends words and written communication," Powers said. "There's an understanding that happens in the heart when music is involved that just doesn't happen any other way."

The blending of words and music in songs is very important to Powers.

"That's my complete and utter focus in life: lyric, and the way the melody makes the lyric soar," Powers said.

"I've actually been known to read too much into music," he added with a laugh.

Long-lasting effects

His love for music and drama and his energy inspired many students to consider a career in music. He is careful to communicate with them how difficult it can be.

"I don't actively discourage going into music," Powers said. "But I don't sugar-coat it."

That's one of the reasons he takes students to New York City and Broadway every other year.

"That's an education all by itself, to see somebody that's so talented," Powers said. "At least they know the size of the mountain, what they have left to accomplish."

He said he values the friendships he's forged with his students as well as what they continue to teach him.

"I've loved every minute of it," Powers said.

He's led students through a long list of shows and performances, including "Jesus Christ Superstar," "All Shook Up," "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and others.

"I've had some great fun over the years," Powers said. "There have been so many memorable moments."

He'll miss the daily contact with students, he said.

"That certainly keeps you young," Powers said.

Former students include not only professional musicians - church musicians, music teachers and performers - but a host of amateur musicians and actors to whom music is a necessary part of life.

Influential instructor

While his daughter, Jen Powers, a 1999 Portage High School graduate, called him dad during her time in his classes, she recalls best his guidance and inspiration.

"I could tell right away that I would learn a lot from him," Jen said. "Even though he was my dad - he was a great director.... He made me love music."

Her father's energy and humor - he has a habit of making faces at his students during a performance, to get them to relax and smile, she said - had a special ability to draw the best out of his teenage students.

"I think people worked harder than they would have with a lesser director," she said.

Michelle Barthel Moe, a 2003 grad, now counts Powers as one of her favorite teachers in high school.

He inspired Moe, now living in Denver, to earn a degree in music at Lawrence University in Appleton. "It was so much a part of me and so much of how I grew up. I didn't want to just leave everything behind," Moe said.

Powers helped her gain the self-esteem and confidence necessary to earn her degree in music.

"I had a bad confidence level," she admitted. "It's something I've struggled with."

Powers was "absolutely" the most influential teacher he had in school, said Justin O'Rourke, a 2003 Portage High School graduate.

"He really pushes his students," O'Rourke said. "He demands some attention to detail which is something not many teachers do."

O'Rourke, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in political science and legal studies, tours the area as a professional musician, playing saxophone with Johnny Rocker and the High Rollers, based in Madison.

Powers gave more than just a love for music to his students.

O'Rourke credits Powers with teaching him important life skills such as high self-esteem, self-confidence and teamwork - all gleaned from participating in high school musicals.

Singing in front of an audience - and opening yourself to criticism - brought him the confidence needed when speaking with people and when working with a team, O'Rourke said.

"It's really given me a lot of confidence for everything else I've done after that point," O'Rourke said. "Mike was really the one to pull it out of me."

For Erika Ness-Faul, a graduate of Portage High School in 2003, Powers' legacy has become her own. While she has chosen not to make a career of music - she is in cosmetology school in Madison - music and theater continue to dominate her life.

Ness-Faul continues to sing at weddings, and helps to run the children's theater workshop at the Portage Center for the Arts.

A key moment in her high school career, she recalls, was the 2003 performance of "Smokey Joe's Cafe," which, as a student of classical and operatic voice, was unlike anything she'd ever performed.

Powers pushed her to explore a new realm of her voice, extending her abilities to experiment with the rough, growling lines of blues songs like Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog."

"What I discovered was my belt," Ness-Faul said.

The "belt" or strong, sometimes rough, voice, required different skills and even different muscles than her normal soprano voice.

It's a skill she continues to use during performances at weddings, she said.

"It turned out amazing, and all of us became much better musicians because of it," Ness-Faul said. "I'm more well-rounded now."

She gives credit to Powers for the discovery and for bringing out of his students all that they had.

"He was always pushing, pushing for something else," she said.

A new path

It will be good, Powers said, for the high school music program to have a new perspective and a leader with different talents than he has, who will create a new and different program.

It's a good time to retire, he said - before his program becomes stale.

"I don't want to be the director that stays three years too long," Powers said.

Powers said he expects the idea of retirement will catch up with him in September, when he won't be returning to Portage High School.

He also asserts that he's not counting down the days to the end of the school year.

"I don't tend to dwell on that stuff," Powers said. "I'm just not thinking about me. I've tried hard always to make this about the kids."

Powers recently continued his education, receiving a master's degree in education in 2005 from Viterbo University in La Crosse.

He's not yet made specific plans for the next phase of his life, although he said that classes in cooking, wine-tasting and French might be just the thing, as well as perhaps joining the concert choirs in Madison. Or perhaps a few months in the Peace Corps.

After all, he's not ready for the rocking chair and a blanket quite yet.

"Hey, when I look into the mirror, I still see 21," Powers said with a laugh.

If you go

What: Portage High School Choral Cabaret, featuring a wide variety of entertainment including choirs, swing choir, jazz choir, soloists, instrumentalists and some surprises.

Where: Portage High School auditorium

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Admission: Tickets are $5 and are on sale in the school office or at the door.

sgreen@capitalnewspapers.com

745-3504