Twenty years after reuniting, father and daughter to share stage in Lawrence

Rachel Dirks’ story is a real-life “August Rush.”

The 2007 drama, which follows a young musical prodigy who reunites with his birth parents after years of separation to find they share his talents, is not all that different from Dirks’ own life, she said.

Growing up in Newton, Dirks enjoyed singing at church and playing her cello. Her parents, a psychologist and a business professor, supported these interests from the start — partly because they also love music, and partly because, well, they sort of had to.

Rachel Dirks and her birth father, Tim Noble, had just met for the first time when this picture was taken 20 years ago. Dirks, a music director of the Lawrence Community Orchestra, and Noble, an accomplished opera singer, will perform together this weekend at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

“I was adopted at birth,” said Dirks, who serves as a director with the Lawrence Community Orchestra, as well as director of orchestras at Lawrence High School. “It was a situation where it was not going to work out for my birth parents, so my birth mother put me up for adoption and stipulated that I be placed in a family who would encourage my music.”

That’s because both biological parents, she later discovered, are professional musicians. Her father, Tim Noble, is a distinguished professor of voice at Indiana University and has sung at venues all over the world, from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House to La Teatro Felice in Venice, Italy.

Now, in a “dream-like scenario,” Dirks will share the stage with her birth father for the first time at the LCO’s “Americana” concert this Sunday. Dirks will conduct the orchestra’s tribute to World War I and its Lawrence veterans while Noble, the concert’s guest soloist, will sing an Aaron Copland piece.

If you go

What: Lawrence Community Orchestra’s “Americana”

Where: Liberty Memorial Central High School, 1400 Massachusetts St.

When: 4 p.m. Sunday

Cost: Tickets cost $10 for students and $15 for everyone else. They can be purchased at the door or online.

Finding her biological parents, her father in particular, has allowed her to finally put together the missing puzzle pieces of her identity, Dirks said. It was in college, a pivotal time in any young person’s life, when she finally felt emotionally ready to meet them.

With the help of her parents and the adoption agency, Dirks found her mother first and, three years later, connected with her father. She knew Noble was a big deal when she looked him up in a book of musicians and found him listed along with his agent.

Noble was performing with the Santa Fe Opera House, and Dirks, then 24, flew down to New Mexico to hear him sing.

“I remember just having butterflies in my stomach. I was so nervous,” Dirks recalled. “But the minute I saw him, he just wrapped me up in this huge bear hug, and it was so great. It was really special.”

Now, 20 years later, the pair have only grown closer. They try to see each other at least once a year and talk on the phone regularly. Dirks has even been able to meet her three half-siblings (she celebrated Thanksgiving with her half-brother last year) and a grandmother. Her own sons, also musically inclined, adore Noble, whom they call “Grandpa Tim,” she said.

For Noble, 69, it’s all thanks to Dirks’ adoptive parents. If they hadn’t supported her decision to find him, Noble may have never met his long-lost daughter. He, of course, thought about her over the years, but didn’t want to appear “out of the blue” and insert himself in her life if she didn’t want him to.

Now, the proud father says, “Something that was bad turned out to be pretty darn good.”

“They were secure enough in their relationship with her to allow me to meet her, and they’ve accepted me,” Noble said. “They’ve stayed at our home here in Bloomington, Indiana. I was invited to Rachel’s wedding and was there for that. They’ve been really amazing.”

In fact, Marvin and Ruthann will drive up from Newton early this weekend just to spend extra time with Noble before the concert, Dirks said. They’ll both be in attendance at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School on Sunday, watching from the audience as their daughter and her biological father perform together.

Dirks calls it a “full-circle” moment.

“It’s like validating everything that’s happened up until this point,” she said, brushing away tears. “I feel like I’m an equal with him, and that’s powerful. That’s really powerful.”