by Catherine Frank

Although Florence Peacock and Ann Marie Thomas are a generation apart and received very different styles of training, both are fascinated by singing as a form of expression and the role of the arts in society.

Thomas gave her first public performance in the second grade at East Side Elementary in Douglasville, Ga. She appeared in "Sesame Street Review" singing "I Love Trash." She did not focus on music until after she had undertaken a very different career as a student of information and computer science at Georgia Tech.

Thomas finally found the energy to give to music four years ago when good teachers like Penelope Jensen and the supportive environment of an artistic community like Chapel Hill encouraged her to pursue a talent that she says now feels like second nature to her. She pursues that career with the same passion and seriousness that she devotes to her business as a builder of Web sites.

Florence Peacock has been performing since the age of 3 when she appeared in a recital in Covington, Ga., and sang "My Country 'tis of Thee." Peacock found music a natural form of expression in part because it was a natural part of life in her household.

Peacock's mother studied and loved piano and voice. Her grandmother had played the organ at her church from the time she was 12 years old (when she had to get her brothers to help her push the pump organ's pedals) until she was 80 when she suffered a stroke while sitting on the organ bench.

In addition to the example of these women, Peacock found an attentive audience in her father. She would daily prepare a song from the musical theater to perform for him. Thus she learned the pleasure and importance of an audience for a performer's sense of confirmation.

Although Peacock had studied piano for years (often rising at 7 in the morning to make sure that she was able to practice before she went to school), she began her formal training in voice at Hollins College and continued at Yale University.

While Thomas and Peacock have taken a very different path in their study of music, both emphasize that a natural passion and a supportive environment create the rare chemistry that can lead to the magic of performance.

Different training has led these women to similar ideas about the importance of music, both personally and culturally. Both women spoke of the importance of singing as a form of communication that conveys greater subtlety and meaning than speaking.

Ann-Marie notes that the words and music on the page are only a "small subset" of the information that one is trying to convey in performance. She uses a metaphor from her life as a designer of Web sites: The difference between speaking and singing is like the difference in richness and detail between low and high bandwidth communication on the Internet. Singing allows one to use pitch, tone, rhythm and the body itself to create a far more complex message than words alone.

Thomas wants to convey this rich potential of music to a generation of people that has lost its sense of the power of art. She became discouraged while attending Georgia Tech. She found that many people who shared her love of engineering and computer science were entirely pragmatic, worrying only about the amount of money they could make. She wants to be part of a movement to reawaken a sense of the way in which the arts can enrich individual lives without taking away something from others.

Thomas is passionate about the Internet for the same reasons that she is passionate about music -- because it has the potential to unlock new ways of seeing and doing things.

Peacock speaks of her early experience of singing in church and the desire to send sound to God and the excitement of finding a whole new kind of tonality in her study of Asian music. In other kinds of performance she speaks of the triangle of the audience, the singer and the music, all giving sustenance to and drawing it from one another. Teaching is yet another way that one may give to the community that love of rich communication at the same time that one can continue to learn.

Both Thomas and Peacock remind us of the importance of the arts in our community. Both lead rich lives that include many other jobs, and both see art as a way to balance the many concerns of daily affairs with a sense of their relation to the outside world and to their own cultural tradition and the traditions of others. This glimpse into their lives indicates just how the arts can and should function to bring us together in trying times.

Peacock said that she had attended two UNC football games since the events of Sept. 11. Instead of the usual milling around by fans during the national anthem, she said, people sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" with fervor, some with tears in their eyes. This is an important image of the way that all of us respond to the power of music and see it as a way to act as a community.

If you would like to experience the power of communication in music as realized by Thomas and Peacock, you will have an opportunity in the near future. Thomas will perform the role of Laurie in an excerpt from Copland's opera "The Tender Land" in a free performance today at 3 p.m. at the Ackland Art Museum on the UNC campus. She will repeat the performance on Oct. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Senior Center on Elliott Road in Chapel Hill.

Peacock will take part in the Open-Sing "Messiah" at 7 p.m. Dec. 17 at the Wesley Foundation on Pittsboro Street. The entire community is invited. She will also perform with mezzo-soprano Dorrie Casey on Feb. 24 at 3 p.m. at the Horace Williams House on East Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill.