WCC Takes Boston
Choir members bring song and service to city

By Jess Decina

Despite a whirlwind weekend of service projects and performances, members of the Westminster Choir College (WCC) Schola Cantorum were focused at the front of their bus, eager to hear one thing: home-stay horror stories.

During their two-day tour in Boston, the choir members stayed with families throughout suburban Boston. While some had perfectly normal experiences, others did not get so lucky, especially in the case of sophomore Brittany Hines-Hill.

Hines-Hill’s home stay involved a family with six children and a three-legged cat. The oldest child, she said, had expected her to be in middle school, not college-aged.

“A family can make or break a trip,” she said. “They can be quirky [or] they can be generic. Either way, they give you something to laugh or cry about on the bus, and definitely provide for some entertainment and a break from all the choir tension.”

The Schola Cantorum is the primary choral experience for sophomores at WCC, according to Sue Ellen Page, the choir’s conductor. One of the newest aspects implemented in the Schola experience is the Hearts and Hands and Voices tour, which combines performances with community service.

“This is not a typical trip for WCC ensembles, and in the past, Schola has not always had a tour,” she said. “I made the suggestion that since there is not a service element required in the undergraduate curriculum that this be a part of Schola.”

Page worked with the sophomore class officers at WCC to hatch the Saturday Day of Service, designed as an afternoon of volunteer work for several organizations across Mercer County on Saturday, March 11. Sophomore Benjamin Bouton, who sang at Acorn Glen Assisted Living and volunteered at HomeFront, a facility for battered women and their children, described his day of service as “incredibly gratifying.”

“[At the nursing home] I heard one woman in her ’80s walk by me and say, ‘That was the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard in my life,’” he said. “To have someone that has been around for that long say something like that made the trip more than worth it.”

Thoughts of kindly old women, however, were probably the last thing on Bouton’s mind in the early hours of March 12, when he and the other choir members departed for Boston at 5 a.m. More than five hours later, the still-sleepy singers had about an hour’s leisure time before their first performance of the day.

The choir members lent their voices to the Common Cathedral, a weekly mass service held for the homeless and needy in the area. The choir witnessed firsthand “the real hardships experienced in our world everyday,” said Lauren McDowell, one of the sophomore class officers. McDowell admitted that although these realities were not the most pleasant ones to face, she was grateful for the opportunity.

“This experience truly made me appreciate how fortunate I have been,” she said. “It is very easy to forget about people in need when you are in such a small environment such as Westminster where the intense course work keeps you very focused on your own needs.”

Afterward, the choir was shuttled across town to the First Baptist Church in Newton, Mass., for its second performance of the day. The Scholites shared the spotlight with a much younger crowd as they sang selections of Mozart with two other children’s choirs.
According to McDowell, the choir was able “to share a mutual love of music” with the children involved in the performance.

After parting ways for the soon-to-be infamous overnight stays with their host families, the choir members reunited on March 13, for their final stop: the Boston Arts Academy of Fenway High School. They performed selected works from their collection of songs, then followed with a question and answer session, giving advice to the students involved in the school’s music program.

“I hope we showed them that professionalism is not always stuffy,” Hines-Hill said. “We were a talented, professional choir and we were honestly having a good time doing what we were doing.”

The performance also had the added bonus of providing information about WCC’s programs, which is useful for the high school student about to take his or her crucial next step toward college, Page said.

“In addition to offering [our] gifts of music and community, we were able to do some recruiting for WCC [and] Rider as well,” she said.

Within two days, the choir had performed in venues ranging from the rainy streets of Boston Common to the quiet but cramped lobby of a nursing home. The variety of people and places, however, does not alter the experience, Page said.

“A concert is a concert, whether it is for 40 people or 400,” she said. “You prepare, you do your best, you draw on the texts and the music for inspiration, and you offer your music as a gift to whomever is present.”