LINDAPALOOZA

Singing at home was never limited to the shower for a young Linda Kiracibasi.

“I sang all the time when I was growing up, because music was always my thing,” recalls Kiracibasi, who was born in Los Angeles and attended high school in New Jersey. “Bless my parents (Ray and Margaret) for having to listen to me sing everywhere in our house.

“They never asked me to stop singing, so I took that as a good sign.”

This past spring, Kiracibasi, 71, concluded a wonderful 45-year run as a lower school music teacher at North Shore Country Day (NSCD) in Winnetka. For the last 37 years of her tenure, she served as a junior kindergarten-through-fifth-grade instructor.

NSCD showered the uber-popular Kiracibasi with praise on May 19, staging an on-campus retirement concert—Lindapalooza— in her honor. More than 150 people attended the event, including alumni and the families of current families at the college-preparatory school.

A third grader sang a moving rendition of “Tomorrow,” from the musical Annie.

“Good thing I had a large pile of Kleenex nearby,” says Kiracibasi, an alto who later joined several other warblers on stage, ages 4 to 19, to perform 10 songs. That set—“Puff the Magic Dragon” and Love Grows,” to name a couple of tunes—turned into a series of sing-along numbers with the audience members and capped the festive occasion.

“Linda has a knack for understanding people from the inside, and she has that special talent for finding the kid that needs a little extra something,” says Lisa McClung Ristic (NSCD Class of 1987), one of four Lindapalooza emcees and the mother of two daughters/NSCD graduates. “She knows how to make music transform people to think better of themselves and to become better for others.”

But Kiracibasi’s career in music education didn’t end with the farewell at NSCD. The Skokie resident plans to teach this fall at Family Matters, a K-4th-grade school based in Rogers Park. She’ll instruct two classes two days per week.

“I can’t quit teaching music to kids cold,” admits Kiracibasi, who earned a degree in music education at Northwestern University in 1973, after graduating from Governor Livingston Regional High School in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. “The joy I see on kids’ faces while they’re learning music has always thrilled me, and there’s nothing better, from a teacher’s perspective, than watching them grow as musicians and as human beings. I enjoyed teaching the four-year-old at North Shore Country Day as much as I did the fifth grader.

“Music can do something for kids that academics can’t—and I mean that as a positive,” adds Kiracibasi, who’s trained to teach voice, guitar, and piano. “Music allows kids to express themselves and gain confidence along the way.”

Kiracibasi received a record player from her mother, Margaret, at the age of 5 or 6. Margaret’s dream was to sing in a big band one day. The mother— “She had a beautiful voice,” Linda says— and daughter watched television shows together in the 1950s and 1960s, especially ones featuring performances from singers Perry Como, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, or Nat King Cole. They also bonded while listening to The Andrews Sisters.

Margaret’s collection of albums at home included every record produced by The Ray Conniff Singers.

“I often watched The Mickey Mouse Club, too, because of that show’s music,” Kiracibasi says. “I first heard the song “Volare” on The Dean Martin Show and loved belting that song in Italian at home. But I got hooked on musical theatre when I was 12 and sitting in an aisle seat for productions of The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and The Music Man at Art Linkletter’s theater in San Fernando Valley, California.

“I was going to be on Broadway.” Kiracibasi shifted her sights to a career in teaching as she entered high school, thinking the position of school choral director would be a fulfilling one. She student-taught at Colorado Academy, a K-12 school, during her senior year at Northwestern.

NSCD hired Kiracibasi in 1978.

“I always wanted North Shore Country Day students to enjoy music class, even when it was all about hard work,” says Kiracibasi, who once accompanied eight NSCD students and their parents to Carnegie Hall in New York. “Music to elementary students doesn’t always have to be cute or fun. It can be beautiful. Young kids can be creative and thoughtful.”

Linda and Sedat Kiracibasi, a native of Turkey who worked in the technology industry, got married at Northwestern University’s Alice Millar Chapel in 1995. Sedat, who loved classical music, died in 2015. Linda still owns a house in Turkey.

The owner of five cats, Kiracibasi, the semi-retiree, will start volunteering one day a week at Barb’s Precious Rescue and Adoption Center in Palatine and continue to sing with 19 others in the Evanston-based Chamber Choir, which stages two concerts per year.

Kiracibasi’s voice has been part and parcel of the choir for 35 years.

“What’s important to me is caring about other people,” Kiracibasi says. “It’s also important to take responsibility for yourself, and that if you make a mistake, fix it and move on—there’s too little of that these days.”

Decades ago, when she was about to begin her second year at NSCD, Kiracibasi did an on-campus demonstration with parents at the lower school’s Go To School Night. Some of them played Orff instruments, such as the xylophone and chime bars.

Dick Hall, NSCD’s head of school in 1979, took it all in and approached Kiracibasi later that evening.

“He told me, ‘You’re going to retire from this school,’” Kiracibasi recounts. “I was all of 28 years old, and I hope I gave a polite response, but I am sure I was thinking he was a bit crazy and that retirement was a long way off. Well, here we are, and his prediction came true.”

North Shore Country Day is located at 310 Green Bay Road in Winnetka. For more information, call 847-446-0674 or visit nscds.org.