Lee Bowman did not set out to become a singer and donor with the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir. He set out to hear Handel’s Messiah.
When Lee and his wife moved to Indianapolis in 1989, catching an annual holiday Messiah performance became a seasonal tradition. He had sung in high school and college, played in bands, and married a musician. He knew what a good choir sounded like. What he heard at ISC stopped him in his tracks.
“It was just a notch above anything I’d heard at different churches or any place else in town,” Lee said.
That first impression stayed with him for thirty-five years.
From the Audience to the Stage
Lee’s resume reads like a career in science and business, but his home life tells a different story. He spent 29 years at Eli Lilly and Company, earned his PhD at Purdue, and raised three sons, all while staying close to the world he grew up in. His father was a working musician; his wife holds a degree in music education and plays woodwinds with several Indianapolis organizations; and his youngest son directs bands in Hamilton Southeastern schools. For years, as Lee balanced work and raising a family, concert-going took a back seat. But ISC was never far.
Lee had followed the choir since 1989, rarely missing a Messiah performance. His connection to Indianapolis’s music community eventually brought him closer to ISC itself, and three years ago, he auditioned and joined the tenor section.
Singing alongside some of the most talented volunteer vocalists in the city gave him a view of the organization that ticket holders never get. The administration was sharp, the mission was clear, and the people were serious about both.
“There are a lot of deserving arts organizations to support in the Indianapolis area,” he said. “But you want to know that the dollars are really going into quality administration, management, and production. Until you’re standing inside that choir, you don’t fully appreciate what you’re hearing as the audience. The talent in that room is extraordinary, and the fact that every one of those voices is volunteering their time makes it even more remarkable.”
What Giving to ISC Actually Supports
For Lee, one piece of ISC’s programming stands out above the rest: the conducting fellowship.
Each year, ISC brings in a new conducting fellow to advance its educational mission. Different background, different style, same standard of excellence. For a family with deep roots in music education, supporting the next generation of conductors is not a philanthropic abstraction.
“We’ve spent our whole lives around music education,” Lee said. “Supporting an organization that takes that part of its mission as seriously as ISC does means something to us.”
Lee and his wife are not single-cause donors. They support the Civic Theater, the Indianapolis Wind Symphony, and a handful of other organizations they believe in. They have watched the post-pandemic years hit the arts sector hard, seen organizations they care about struggle to stay afloat, and gotten more intentional about where their dollars go. ISC keeps making the list because it keeps earning it. The programming is ambitious, the administration is tight, and the mission runs deeper than the stage.
“The Indianapolis Symphonic Choir is such a stable and central part of the music community in town,” he said. “When we have events, and there’s an opportunity to give at the table, I can’t help myself. I always have to throw in a little bit more.”
For Allie Boles, Director of Development for ISC, that kind of instinct is exactly what ISC works to cultivate.
“We’re not just asking people to write a check. We’re inviting them into something. When a donor is also a choir member, that investment becomes deeply personal, and that’s when the impact really compounds.”
Singing Mozart for the First Time
Lee has wanted to sing Mozart’s Requiem since he watched Amadeus in the 1980s. The film follows Mozart’s professional life, and the Requiem plays through its final act. He never forgot it.
This May, he finally gets his chance.
Voices of the Spirit pairs Mozart’s Requiem with Jeffrey Van’s choral setting of Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry, performed with mixed chorus and classical guitar. Lee did not know what to expect from the Whitman piece going in. It surprised him.
“Having that Whitman anthology as part of this has been both a surprise and a delight,” he said.
Why It Matters to Give
Lee is direct on this point: arts organizations rely on donor support to survive. The financial reality is clear—and in the years since the pandemic, it’s become impossible to ignore.
The amount, he says, is not the point. What matters is showing up.
“I’ve watched high school students sit in that room during Festival of Carols, waiting for their turn on stage, and you can see the moment it hits them. That’s what this organization does. It creates those moments, and someone has to make sure it keeps happening.”
It is a simple observation, but it carries the whole argument. ISC is not just a performance organization. It is one of the few places in Indianapolis where young people stumble into something that changes how they hear the world.
Boles could not agree more.
“Every gift, whether it’s twenty-five dollars or twenty-five thousand, is part of how we keep doing this work. It funds the fellowships, it supports the education programs, and it keeps the doors open for people who couldn’t otherwise afford a ticket. None of that happens without people like Lee saying yes.”
Come Hear It Yourself: Voices of the Spirit takes place Sunday, May 17, at 3 p.m. at Second Presbyterian Church, 700 N. Meridian Street in Indianapolis. A free community education event, In-Choir-ing Minds, precedes the concert on Tuesday, May 12, at 7 p.m. at Butler University, Lilly Hall, Room 112. To learn more or to make a gift, visit indychoir.org.
