by Kevin Cummings, Messenger Staff Writer
Donning their white cassocks and red surplices, the University of the South Choir is an integral part of Sewanee, and this year they have a new choirmaster as they start the journey toward Lessons and Carols.
The choir has performed at several Eucharist services at All Saints’ Chapel this school year and will perform their first Evensong service at the Chapel this Sunday, Sept. 25, at 4 p.m.
Katie Kull, a senior ecology and biodiversity major, is choir president.
“Being in the choir has been one of the defining activities in my life as a University student,” Kull said. “The music is truly what drew me to this choir, because we get to sing some of the most beautiful, challenging and haunting choral pieces ever written.
“I know that we’ve done well when I get goosebumps from listening to us all sing together, even on songs we’ve rehearsed a thousand times,” she added. “It’s unlike anything else I’m involved in in its ability to completely change my mood to one of joy and peace.”
The choir’s Evensong performance will feature hymns, canticles, responses and organ voluntaries, said Geoffrey Ward, the new choirmaster and organist at All Saints’ Chapel. He replaced longtime choirmaster Robbe DelCamp, who retired. Ward, who is originally from Ontario, Canada, is the former organist and choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Memphis.
Both William Stokes, the assistant University organist, and Ken Miller, the new organist at the School of Theology, will perform organ music before the Evensong service starts and at the end, Ward added.
The University Choir features 47 students, including 19 freshmen and three international students from Italy, China and Russia. The school holds auditions during orientation each year.
“I am always on the lookout for new singers,” Ward said. “This means that auditions can happen and hopefully will continue through the year.”
Davis Couch, a senior economics major and choir member, said the singing has a therapeutic effect.
“If I were to describe how the music we sing makes me feel in one word, it would be ‘calming,’” Couch said. “It’s nice to forget about the million and one different things that we as students constantly have to take care of and just enjoy singing beautiful music for an hour or so every other day.”
Couch calls the choir one of the most tight-knit organizations on campus.
“Being a part of the choir has been one of my favorite parts of my Sewanee career,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe my experience in the choir without talking about the people in it. My choir experience has been nothing but good because of the people around me and how much fun we have singing together.”
The choir is best known for the annual Lessons and Carols performances in early December, which draws people from hundreds of miles away.
“Lessons and Carols is the Super Bowl of the University Choir,” Kull said. “I’m also a tour guide for Sewanee, and I usually get goosebumps just standing in the chapel telling visitors about the experience of singing the services.
“It’s such a visceral thing,” she added. “The whole chapel is filled with the smell of evergreens and candle smoke and all we can see are each others’ faces illuminated by our candles. There are parts of the accompanying brass melodies of some of the hymns that bring me to tears when I hear them again for the first time each December.”
The choir often travels both internationally and domestically and this spring break, the choir will tour in the U.S., including a choral Evensong at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington D.C.
“We are looking to expand our contacts with alumni from Sewanee as well as recruiting students specifically to sing in the choir,” Ward said. “The tour will certainly help with this. We are hoping to start a choir camp for high school students that will expose more students to the University.”
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