The Hillsdale College Chapel Choir traveled to perform for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 70th Anniversary Gala on Sept. 28 in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hillsdale alumnus John Burtka ’12, president of ISI, invited the choir to sing at the gala to celebrate the dedication of the new Linda L. Bean Conference Center. The event also featured keynote speaker Tucker Carlson. The choir performed again the following day at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., just down the street from the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.
“The trip was initiated when Dr. Arnn, who is a trustee of ISI, suggested that we sing for their gala dinner,” assistant accompanist and conductor to the choir Katherine Rick said. “From there, we decided that while we had the whole choir out east, it might make sense to swing by and do a concert near the Kirby Center. As the college re-emphasizes its Christian identity, it makes sense that the Chapel Choir should function as a sort of religious vanguard in an outward-facing way.”
This was the first time the Chapel Choir has traveled, and according to Associate Professor of Music and Director of Sacred Music Timothy McDonnell, the students adjusted well to the difficulties of performing on the road.
“Going outside the college and performing with very little acclimation time in various new environments pushes the capabilities of our ensemble to new levels,” McDonnell said. “The choir did an admirable job, and their preparation of a concert program in only a month of rehearsal was an impressive accomplishment.”
The day after their performance at St. Joseph’s, the students visited the Museum of the Bible in Wasington, D.C., and the museum’s head sound engineer offered them the opportunity to sing in the World Stage Theater, McDonnell said.
“The theater is outfitted with a special audio configuration which allows the room to be adjusted to the acoustics of world-famous venues, such as Carnegie Hall,” McDonnell said. “It was a jaw-dropping experience to hear the room go from dead silence to the reverberation of Hagia Sophia.”
According to junior Madeline Scheve, the choir benefited from learning to perform on the road in venues with different acoustics from Christ Chapel.
“I think there’s definitely an adjustment going from work mode to performance mode, especially when you’re performing in a foreign environment,” Scheve said. “There’s definitely a learning curve and some growing pains, but we adjusted really fast.”
The benefit of that experience is evident in rehearsals since returning to campus, according to Scheve.
“In rehearsal I could already tell that everyone felt more comfortable,” Scheve said. “Just having a couple of different experiences under their belts of singing in different spaces.”
Before returning to campus, the students had the opportunity to visit museums and tour Washington, D.C. While exploring the district together, a group of students met and took a photo with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. When some of the students attended Mass at St. James Catholic Church in Virginia on Sunday, they met Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas and took a group photo.
“He was super down to earth,” sophomore Augie McCormack said. “He was asking our names and told us to say hi to Larry.”
The students formed better friendships with each other while traveling and performing together, McCormack said.
“I’m a lot better friends with everybody in Chapel Choir now,” McCormack said. “Just because you’re doing so many things together, sharing bus trips, going to hotels and museums and performances and practices. You’re just singing the whole time and everyone’s super joyful.”
Scheve said that while most people in Chapel Choir were not necessarily friends at the beginning of the semester, they were all much closer by the end of the trip.
“It felt like traveling with a big family,” Scheve said. “It was just like, we’re all in this together.”
According to senior Joseph Perez, the closer the students in Chapel Choir grow to each other through trips and experiences such as this one the better they will perform.
“Choir is such a communal ensemble style activity, that the better you know the people that you are singing with the better you sound because you know them, you know how they sing, you know how they think,” Perez said. “I think we will sing better for the whole year because of that.”
McDonnell said he hopes the choir will travel again in the future, but there are no current plans to do so.
“Travel is a tricky proposition for the choir, both due to the academic demands of our students but also due to our primary charge to provide sacred music for our splendid Christ Chapel,” McDonnell said. “However, I think we’ve been bitten by the ‘travel bug,’ and we’ll endeavor to find opportunities to take our music on the road somehow.”
