RICHMOND — Staying light on its feet and being ready to sing at a moment’s notice has been a formula for success, says the director of one church’s youth choir, which spent a week this summer in Washington and New York sharing its message in a variety of settings.
For United Praise, the 40-voice youth choir of Huguenot Road Baptist Church in Richmond, a year of preparation culminated in a memorable trip up the East Coast in June, and featured concerts in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Huguenot Road's youth choir at DC Central Kitchen.
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“Our purpose was to make a difference in someone’s day through a song,” said Phillip Brown, minister of music and worship at Huguenot Road Church, who directs the youth choir.
The choir’s journey began a year ago, when the choral group of 6th through 12th graders began preparing music — all of it acappella.
“This was intentional, as the students would learn later,” said Brown. “We needed to be light on our feet and ready to sing at a moment’s notice in any kind of situation.”
To instill musical confidence and encourage accountability, Brown placed an adult singer, each of whom would later chaperone the trip, in each vocal section — soprano, alto,
The choir outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.
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tenor and bass. The adults enhanced the groups choral sound — “Once the students could hear their part, they sang out with full voices,” said Brown — but they also ensured consistent attendance.
“The adult section leaders were responsible for encouraging the students all year long,” Brown said. “The result was 83 percent of the students had perfect attendance from August to May. The rest only missed a week or two.”
And, he added, involving the tour chaperones from the beginning gave them an investment in the trip’s ultimate success. “It was a win-win situation.”
Knowing that the trip would require extensive walking, Brown scheduled two-hour rehearsals during the last few months of preparation — one hour of singing and another of brisk walking.
In the spring prior to the summer trip, United Praise found performing venues to hone their skills. Among them was a concert for homeless adults, who were at Huguenot Road as part of the church’s involvement in CARITAS (Congregations Around Richmond Involved To Assure Shelter), an emergency shelter program active in Richmond during the winter.
“The response [from the church’s guests] was so overwhelming that it really encouraged us to raise the bar even higher,” said Brown.
The tour itself began in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs with a concert at a juvenile detention center — where many of the inmates were the same age as the students singing — followed by participation in a locally-sponsored “Battle of the Choirs” at the Virginian, an assisted-living facility in Fairfax. United Praise tied for first place.
Singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
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The next stop was the Methodist Home of the District of Columbia and then the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“It was a proud moment to be able to proclaim our faith in song in such an important political and historic place,” said Brown.
That evening, the students spent time at DC Central Kitchen, a 20-year-old charity that collects unused food from local restaurants and prepares meals for shelters, halfway houses, drug rehabilitation centers and senior and children’s feeding programs in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. United Praise singers peeled, sliced and diced several hundred pounds of donated sweet potatoes and onions.
The previous spring’s exercise during rehearsals served them well in Washington, Brown said. “Our Monday in D.C. alone was the equivalent of walking a 10K.”
Traveling by train to New York, the choir stayed in the basement of Park Slope Community Church in Brooklyn as they undertook a series of concerts across the city — at St. John the Divine, at Mineral Springs in Central Park and at St. Paul’s Chapel in lower Manhattan, which has become a memorial site to victims of the terrorist attacks on the nearby World Trade Center.
At St. Paul’s, “we dedicated our concert to one of our former youth choir members, Douglas Ketcham, who died in the attack on 9/11,” said Brown.
The final New York concert was at Park Slope church, following a free neighborhood cookout sponsored by the church.
In addition to scheduled concerts, United Praise found ample opportunities for impromptu performances, said Brown.
“We sang for train conductors and other commuters, we sang in the D.C. Metro, on the New York subway, twice on the Staten Island Ferry, in restaurants, gifts shops, street corners, for individuals, for groups, for a bar owner in front of his bar, for the homeless as we were feeding them and for handicapped people on the sidewalk outside a church which they were unable to enter because it was not handicapped accessible.
“These impromptu concerts were nearly always initiated by the students who saw someone who needed a lift — and it always brightened their day,” he said.
Brown believes United Praise has “found its voice and its niche.” The choir is making plans for a December mini-tour and another project and trip next summer.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.