The university choir is a diverse group of 71 students and alums joined together by their music.
A recent tour of the United Kingdom allowed the choir to showcase their talents to a global audience. Singing such emotional songs in historical venues was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many.
“Being able to go on a trip and sing some of my favorite songs and be with some of my favorite people was really enriching and soul-feeding. I’ll never experience something like that again,” Alex Silverman, a sophomore nursing major. “I am so unbelievably grateful to have had that opportunity.”
For university choir director and music professor Terese Gemme, touring the great cities of Europe with her students is a privilege.
“The experience always defies words. The experience is multi-faceted, in-terms of developing relationships between the students that are traveling. There’s something about traveling as a group that just really brings people together and connects them in a way that ordinarily being in a rehearsal here doesn’t do,” says Gemme.
In June 2024, the choir embarked on a nine-day tour of London, York and Edinburg. Interim president at the university, Dr. Dwayne Smith had the pleasure of accompanying the choir on their tour to introduce them before they performed in front of people at the cathedrals.
The university’s choir orchestrates their tours in the winter every two years.
However, since COVID-19, the choir wasn’t able to tour again until 2024 leaving them four years of practicing and performing for the university. Gemme says that their touring wouldn’t be possible without the funding.
“We started getting funding for the trips in 2009,” says Gemme. “We brought our first group of students over, and sang Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in a beautiful church in Ireland. Our last trip was in 2020. We came back in January 2020, just weeks before COVID struck.”
The choir was first invited by Simon Carrington who is a famous music scholar in Britain and, at the time, was a professor at Yale University. In 2009, Carrington wanted to use music to heal the world with Gemme saying that it was a hard time. For the choir’s first trip, they performed in Ireland and have been sponsored to go every two years by the Philanthropic foundation.
For the most recent trip to the UK, Gemme focused songs on a theme of peace. She says the songs have strong meaning since when they were released
Trey Jones, a junior communication major, says, “We happened to do some gospel stuff but it wasn’t really religious. Dr. Gemme did it around a theme of peace in times of war because of current events and coming out of the social justice movements after the COVID era.”
One of the songs the choir performed at St. Pancras Church in London—a favorite—is titled “Loch Lomond.” The song is both painful and emotional for the people in the city of Edinburgh, however, after the choir’s performance, cheers and whistles can be heard filling the church with joy and fulfillment.
Alumna Candace Naudé is a soloist who performed in the beginning of the song Loch Lomond. She says she mentally prepared herself to sing into an empty space and what came out was the “most beautiful” solo Naudé has done. Her peers and Gemme were proud of Naudé and she was able to sing the solo at the other locations they toured.
Ellie Canti, a senior healthcare science major, says some of her favorite songs relied on visually unique performance aspects that helped elevate the elegance of the pieces.
“My favorite song was ‘Draw the Circle,’” Canti says. “The way Dr. Gemme formed it is we would have a small group of us in the front and then towards the middle of the song, everybody else from the choir would come around and we would create a circle with our voices. The audience is able to hear our voices coming in every direction of the room.”
Perfecting the songs took months of preparation before the trip. For over eight months, Gemme directed the students in weekly practices. But when it all came together in Europe, Gemme says it made all the practice worth it.
Singing together brings in a sense of global unity. Gemme quotes that she believes it’s important to have as a choir group and to have growth. She loves to hear the choir sing together and see how everyone is learning new vocals and even helping each other with notes.
“We have been kind of practicing and learning all these songs for about eight months now to perform it for different locations was a lot of fun,” Canti says.
The university choir comes together to create art with their voices and perform it for the audience in the cathedrals. The group is able to connect in an emotional way that can also be exhibited to listeners.
“I think the most exciting thing about this trip was being able to travel and doing something I love personally with a bunch of people who also love music,” Canti says. “I think the most memorable is just singing, coming together, and when it all clicks, it sounds absolutely beautiful and amazing.”
Gemme believes performing in the European landmarks brought depth and beauty to the performance. She notes some locations dated to the 11th century.
The places that the choir has performed in, like St. Pancras Church holds a great amount of significance to Europe—culturally, historically, acoustically. Gemme says that the choir performing in these spaces brings in a new level to the singing. Gemme and members of the choir are happy to have had this opportunity.
Through the performances, students have also had the opportunity to represent the university across the globe. They have collaborated with choirs and musical groups from across Europe and been able to showcase their talent to international audiences.
“Every trip we’ve taken we’ve found we develop so much more musically, as musicians, and as ambassadors of Southern to the world,” Gemme says.
