2024 Chamber Choir Tour

A Message from Choral Director Dr. Chris Gilliam

Choir is Pro Humanitate in action. Take a group of students who represent multiple academic majors and minors, various socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, disparate skill levels and experience, and put them together for hours each week to learn how to perform as a cohesive, integrated, supportive whole—you find that ensemble participation is an almost perfect metaphor for our University’s motto. In weekly rehearsal, students learn repertoire that spans multiple genres from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, including modern popular, jazz, and folk-style idioms. Together, they study the history of the composers, texts, and styles of the compositions they sing. They gain musical literacy learning to sight read both traditional and non-traditional notation. The students engage their bodies by learning rhythm and movement that enhances the accuracy, articulation, and affect of each piece. The students meditate on the poetry and prose set by each composer to bring meaning, intent, and stylistic artistry and integrity through the musical interpretation of those texts in order to communicate most effectively to audiences. The singers must listen to each other, shaping vowel sounds and creating myriad vocal colors, all the while blending and balancing with other members of their own section and with the rest the choir to produce the cohesive product. In performance no voice should dominate—every singer must bring their whole strength to every note, every rhythm, every phrase—but they must always consider other to produce cohesive artistry as a whole. E pluribus unum, out of many, one [sound].

Ensemble participation enriches the student collegiate experience in ways that are profound and life-changing, and there is no better laboratory environment whereby the students are able to share the impact of that experience than choir tour. Perhaps the most significant moment of our recent Chamber Choir Southeastern Tour (Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans) was the result of a performance of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, where our Chamber Choir collaborated with members of two local choirs in Memphis, Tennessee. Though the Chamber Choir had two other semester opportunities to perform the Requiem (one with UNCSA’s symphony and Cantata Singers, and the other in an end-of-semester masterworks concert in Brendle featuring the chamber version of the Requiem), it was in this third performance while on tour—the solo organ version accompanied by Memphis-based concert organist Dr. Patrick Scott—that the work became uniquely significant for the singers. In performance, tears flowed from singers and conductor alike, and the audience was rapt in the divine sounds emanating throughout the reverberant acoustical space. As they sang, the students felt the power of collaboration, of creation, of inspiration, unifying their voices to resonate together in what I believe can be described as the “Pro Humanitate Effect.” It was obvious to every choir member—and to the audience—that a very special performance had just taken place. Afterward, we were delighted to receive a touching email from a former Associate Dean at a prominent music conservatory who confirmed as much. He had just lost a parent who had been very dear to him only days before. With his permission, I’ll share a portion of that email with you now:

“The concert was especially meaningful to me, and emotional, as I lost my parent eight days ago. As a reticent introvert, I keep most of my feelings inside, so my grief thus far has been internal. I’m glad I took a handkerchief with me tonight. The tears flowed freely at times; but it gave me such a peaceful feeling that my parent is ok and that I’m going to be ok.

“There is a speech by Karl Paulnack that…he gave to parents who were dropping their kids off at university and possibly wondering what they were getting for the money per year that they were investing. I have appreciated his rhetoric, but I haven’t fully appreciated its meaning until tonight.

“What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: ‘If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2:00 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8:00 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.‘

“Tonight, I was one of the weary souls in the audience. And thanks to you all, I am a little more whole than I was when I got up this morning. And for that, my heart is thankful.”

This former Associate Dean’s letter to the choir reflects the power of Pro Humanitate in action. This is the Pro Humanitate Effect, and it is the choir’s WHY. It is why students in WFU ensembles spend hours every week, despite their enormous workload and myriad other duties, to rehearse with such diligence and dedication in the study of music and to engage in the demanding discipline of learned artistry. Our students go forth from Wake Forest University to have fine careers—some of them in music, but most of them in careers outside the scope of the arts. That is why it is vital that these students be shaped by artistic experiences like choir in their undergraduate years. The power of music—the power of Pro Humanitate experienced fully in the music ensemble / choral music experience—will shape students’ worldview and their humane sensibilities for the rest of their lives, leading to what will be an awareness of, a sensitivity toward, and the influence to inspire life-long outreach and service, Pro Humanitate.

—Dr. Chris Gilliam, Director of Choral Activities
Wake Forest University