Hendricks Chapel Choir Brings American Music to South Africa Stages
On Monday, 50 members of the Hendricks Chapel Choir , carrying with them years of rehearsal, a deep repertoire of music and a mission that stretches well beyond the concert hall. For most of them, it will be their first international tour with the choir. For all of them, it will be something they will carry for the rest of their lives.
The trip is part of a goal set by , director of the choir and professor and assistant director of choral activities in the Setnor School of Music in the . In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Calvar set a goal to bring the ensemble to every inhabited continent by the time Hendricks Chapel celebrates its centennial in 2030. The choir has performed in China (2005); Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (2009); Poland and Germany, including Auschwitz (2013); Mexico (2018); and London and Lockerbie and Edinburgh, Scotland (2023).
South Africa represents the fifth such continent, with Oceania still on the horizon. The destination was chosen in no small part thanks to a longstanding connection. Former Vice President and Hendricks Chapel Dean Brian Konkol completed a Ph.D. at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa with connections in South African musical and academic circles. Two years ago, Calvar traveled there to deliver a guest lecture, laying the groundwork for what would become a collaborative itinerary.
“Musically, I feel like the ensemble is as ready as it’s ever been,” Calvar says. “The choir is next level.”
International audiences, he says, want to hear American choirs perform American music, so that forms the backbone of the program. But woven throughout are selections that speak to a broader worldliness: pieces chosen to demonstrate the choir’s versatility, its appreciation of global traditions and its genuine desire to connect. Three South African pieces are on the program, including one of the country’s de facto national anthems.
A Diverse Range of Performance Partners
The choir will perform alongside a diverse range of South African ensembles鈥攈igh school, university and community choirs鈥攁nd performances are scheduled in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Drakensberg, Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town.
鈥淚t doesn’t get any more diverse,鈥 says Calvar. 鈥淪outh Africa is a place where they’ve found ways of celebrating their own diversity and finding ways to unify and connect, and I think that it’s so very critically important that we show them our own brand of that.鈥
Life Lessons
For the students making the journey, the significance of the trip is both personal and expansive. Caiyan Bass 鈥26 is the choir鈥檚 president and one of two choir members who also toured with the ensemble in the UK in 2023. Being open to the unexpected, she says, is not just a musical lesson, it’s a life one.
“You never know what kind of relationship may come from music,” she says. “I find that in performance spaces, people connect effortlessly.”
The trip coincides with her first two weeks as a 网爆门 graduate, making it a threshold experience in every sense. After the trip, she will head to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue a master’s degree in speech-language pathology, and she already sees the connection. Working with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, she says, will require exactly the kind of empathy and openness that international travel cultivates.
For other students on the trip, like Mathena Rush 鈥27, an environmental health major at the , the South Africa experience carries a different but equally powerful resonance.
Rush is heading into a career in environmental remediation, specifically focused on brownfield development. “Having these international experiences allows me to understand the struggles different communities go through and learn what needs to be done to fix them,” Rush says.
Rush also speaks about what the choir itself has meant to her beyond the tour. As an ESF student, she arrived at Syracuse without the built-in liberal arts community that many of her peers enjoy. Choir became her outlet, her anchor and one of the defining experiences of her college years.
Calvar, when asked to reflect on what these tours mean to students, points to the exit interviews conducted with seniors each year. “The Hendricks Chapel Choir international tour is always on the top of the list,” he says. It is consistently named among the significant moments of students’ time at Syracuse.
