The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., will be filled with voices from Springfield this weekend as a long-running church choir gets back to its traveling roots.

The St. Cecilia Choir, made up of children attending Christ Episcopal Church, will sing at several locations in the nation’s capital and do a little sightseeing while they’re at it.

“The choir has had a long history of travel and we haven’t traveled much since I’ve started,” said Kenny Kabak, Director of Music and Youth Ministries at Christ Episcopal. This is his seventh year leading St. Cecilia. “But the choir in 1990 did a trip to the National Cathedral, which is kind of considered to be the mother of the American Episcopal churches. Since I’ve started here, so many people have reminisced on that story with me and showed me pictures.

“As we were coming out of the pandemic, we did end up taking a small trip up to St. Louis a couple of years ago and just had an amazing experience up there. I’m a huge believer in travel in a music ensemble and what the power of travel does for musicians — especially young musicians and kids who have never been on an airplane before, who’ve never been on a big tour bus before. Washington, D.C., just felt like the next step for us.”

Choir is open to singers of all skill levels

St. Cecilia, named for the patroness of music and musicians, is open to students from third grade through high school. The group rehearses on Wednesday evenings and sings at church every Sunday morning. The choir includes singers like Saskia Stevens, a 16-year-old sophomore at Central High School, and Will Paulette, a Rountree Elementary student who will turn 9 this month.

They might not have much in common beyond their love of music, but they still come together as a cohesive group under Kabak’s direction.

“It was a little scary at first, but it’s been a lot of fun,” Paulette said. “It was something I wanted to do because I really like music and I love to sing.”

And while they’re dedicated, these aren’t necessarily singers who devote all of their time to music. Paulette is big into baseball, while Stevens no longer sings in her school choir, choosing to take part in other activities.

“I really like that (St. Cecilia) is just an environment where you’re really working together, not just for a school or a performance,” Stevens said. “I think it’s really cool because you’re with lots of different kids of lots of different ages, and it’s a very interesting community to be a part of because you don’t really get that in school or in other places in your life. I really love being able to sing with the younger kids and to be able to meet new people from different places.

“And I think that just being able to constantly be singing is something that I love. Every single Sunday we get to sing and we get to perform new music, and it’s always so deeply intertwined with the community, which I really love.”

Singers form friendships, build skills in St. Cecilia

Amelia Granger makes the trip from Bolivar to sing with the choir every other Sunday. Like Paulette, the 9-year-old was a little intimidated.

“It was scary at first because I was like, ‘Oh, I’m from Bolivar. Not many people know Bolivar people in a Springfield choir,’” she said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but I thought it would be fun because I love singing and now I’m starting piano.”

Now she has several friends at St. Cecilia, including Paulette. It makes the long drive from Polk County worth it.

“It takes a long time to get there,” she said. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘No, Mom!’ When I’m asleep on Sundays and it’s a choir day, she yanks my covers off of me and says ‘Wake up’ in my ear and I don’t want to go. When I finally get here, it feels good. It’s fun to see my friends. And I like choir practice. It’s fun.”

The singers aren’t the only people relishing in those relationships and the ever-growing love of music.

“It has made (Will) want to come to church more because he has more of a purpose in being here,” said Val Paulette, Will’s mom. “And I feel like it has forged more friendships, which I think makes him want to come back for more as well. I think that’s been super helpful.”

Like his friend Amelia, Will, too, is adding to his musical skills.

“I just see him really enjoying it and I see him having to work hard at something that he really doesn’t have a lot of training in,” Val said. “He likes to sing, but we’ve never done anything with it before. He wanted to get a keyboard for Christmas and my dad ended up getting that because Kenny really wants him to learn how to read music. So he’s got a keyboard now and we’ve been talking about doing some piano lessons with that, so that it all kind of jells together a little bit better.”

‘I want the kids to like me, but I want them to love music’

All of that is music to Kabak’s well-trained ears. He recognizes that children today are busy — busier than he was — and he would never ask them to give up sports or Scouts or anything else for St. Cecilia. His hope is that they’ll see choir as just as meaningful and worthwhile, just as life-giving as any of those other activities.

“It completely taps into a different side of the brain,” Kabak said. “It asks for a different emotional offering than they’re probably being asked to give in the other facets of their busy lives. I see it as really rounding out the whole child. I just feel like it’s my life call to be able to provide this experience for the kids.”

Kabak calls it “sprinkling in the vegetables.”

“One of the things that I think is really poignant is I want the kids to like me, but I want them to love music,” he said. “I don’t want them to love me but like the music, because I don’t feel like that’s the way. But if they can like me, and they can trust me, and have confidence in me to provide them these holistic and unique experiences through art and expression, then they should just naturally fall in love with music.”

‘You’re so obviously a part of something, you’re very obviously valued’

Even though it isn’t the goal, the choir members say they love singing for Kabak, who Will Paulette described as “funny.”

“It’s really fun to have a director who’s kind of stern, but also is funny at the same time,” added Grainger.

Choir members also say Kabak is willing to adjust and meet them where they’re at in life.

“If you’re in a busy point and you don’t necessarily have time to come to rehearsals every single week, he’ll work with you,” Stevens said. “I think that’s really important because, obviously, people go through phases in their lives whenever they’re not at their best, or whenever they’re not able to give everything to a certain thing. I think a lot of times that means that you stop doing that thing, because you’re like, ‘I’m out of it now,’ and you just don’t go back.

“Kenny definitely encourages us that we can always come back, and he’ll ask you to come back and he’ll tell you that you’re missed or that he wants you to come back. I think the reason that I’ve continued singing here is you’re so obviously a part of something, you’re very obviously valued and you really value everybody else. There are very strong ties within the group.”

Parents have noticed that, too. Val Paulette calls Kabak the driving force.

“He’s just pretty phenomenal,” she said. “And I think that the kids see his energy and see his commitment, and just how excited he is about it, and they love him. They want to do good for him and they know he has high expectations, but he also cares about them and so I think they rise to that.”

Choir will sing from special songbook in Washington

The itinerary for the Washington trip includes cultural and educational opportunities for the singers, along with the performances. They’ll perform at the National Cathedral and they have permit clearance to sing at the World War II Memorial.

“We’ll sing impromptu at the Holocaust Museum, and then one that I’m especially looking forward to is we have a permit to sing at George Washington’s Mount Vernon as a part of one of their wreath-laying ceremonies,” Kabak said. “That’ll be really special.”

The choir has assembled a songbook for the trip, since they’ll be singing unaccompanied. The book includes familiar tunes like “Amazing Grace,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Shenandoah.” It also includes pieces from the “Justice Choir Songbook.” 

Several choir members said they’re looking forward to singing a song called, “We Choose Love,” by Kansas City-based composer Andrea Ramsey. It was inspired by signs she saw at the Women’s March in Denver in 2017.

“You can play around with the words and make them flexible,” Kabak said. “It’s kind of like a Madlib. In rehearsal, I’m going to have the kids design their own arrangements of the song, but essentially the song is, ‘We choose love’ and then you insert the person. So, ‘Sister, we choose love. We’re marching with our sisters for our fundamental rights. We choose love.’ And then you can change those words.”

The St. Cecilia Choir will also perform “Sing For Justice.”

“In that song, basically what the kids are saying is, ‘All who want peace, sing for justice. Join in the call. Justice is love’s public story open for all. Harmony is born of difference. Notes and chords of lived experience. All who want peace, sing for justice. Join in the call,’” Kabak said.

Kabak hopes to grow choir’s culture of travel

Kabak said the group has been “fundraising our butts off all year.” It was important to him that any student who sang in the choir all year would be able to go on the trip free of charge. He said the choir has received a lot of support from parents, parishioners and the community.

“It asked for us to raise quite a big number in that case, if we were able to pull this off, to get all these kids to go for free. And we met our goal,” Kabak said. “I’m grateful to say that we’ve raised, in fundraising and gifts alone, over $20,000 this year just to make this happen. I think that’s just really a testament to the support of our community and people seeing just how critical this is to be able to offer these opportunities and experiences to our young musicians, our kiddos.”

Hopefully it won’t be another 30 years before the singers of St. Cecilia get to take another trip outside of Missouri to perform.

“I could see us one day growing the culture of travel to a place where we could probably take on something international even at some point,” Kabak said. “But Washington, D.C., just kind of felt like the right thing for this year.”