Vocal Synchronicity

The power of voices lifted in song is a formidable one to wield — and local choral groups are exploring the ways in which this style of expression can benefit both individuals and the world around them. For our Voices Issue roundtable, we assembled three choral community-builders striving for musical excellence amidst camaraderie and connection through song.

Pictured: Beau McGregor, Salem, S.D. native and South Dakota State University graduate; longtime youth and collegiate theatre performer; past community theatre actor with what is now The Premiere Playhouse; early childhood education specialist; and executive director of the Rainbow Chorus of Sioux Falls, a choral group welcoming all members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community and allies into a supportive and affirming environment (Credit: Peter Chapman)

How do you feel choral music can positively impact people of all ages?

Kaela Schuiteman: I have noticed that the community is just craving opportunities for their kids. Our numbers keep going up, and I always have people asking if (the Sioux Falls Children’s Choir) has options for even younger kids and even older kids. They're just always looking for a way to get involved and, educationally, they're gaining something that they're not getting at school. But even more than that, socially, they just all bond so much and love getting to sing with other kids that are as passionate about it as they are. They just become best friends and hang out outside of choir and such. So the parents, the kids — we just feel so supported by everyone and by the community and that they just want more and more opportunities. They're craving it.

David DeHoogh-Kliewer: At University of Sioux Falls (USF), I combine artistic endeavors through the choral program, but I also serve as academic advisor for students developing a career in the arts, specifically as future choral directors. Most of them going into music education want to be music teachers and they plan to conduct choirs, and that's a responsibility that I take very seriously after having spent 11 years in K-12 classrooms and rehearsal halls. I know what it's like to be a music teacher and have a lot of experience with that. I teach our courses preparing students to be music educators, music theory and conducting. And that's an aspect of the position that I value greatly because I get to help shape young people's careers as they pursue the arts.

Students in our choral program sing because they love it and get to pursue their passion for singing by going on tours, by participating in service projects and giving back to the communities we get to visit. We consider it a call to serve as the hands and feet of Christ, whether that's through Habitat for Humanity or a soup kitchen or a lot of other rewarding experiences through service projects. And we've been fortunate to keep an ambitious touring rotation since my arrival. It's one of the tenets of our choral program. So for me it's twofold. The choral program, sending our music ministry across this country and across the globe, and then as an academic advisor getting to shape the careers of young people.

Beau McGregor: Rainbow Chorus was created to bring together members of the LGBTQ+ community. When I moved back to Sioux Falls in 2020, I was looking for community and members that were at Club David one night who were part of Sioux Empire Pride Sports Association (SEPSA) were like, “Why don't we do this?” Sioux Falls is growing. I feel like Sioux Falls is going through its own personal renaissance through arts and culture. So let's start building community like the other big cities and create the Rainbow Chorus. And it's just been great.

We’re at about 65 members now, and we just started last year. We have members who are part of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, members who haven’t sung in choirs since high school and some members who have not sung in a choir at all before. Through our great artistic director, Del Hubers, we're able to get through a song in one rehearsal just by supporting each other, showing up for each other. It's meant the world to me and to other members to come together and form friendships, but also heal together, too. My personal coming-out experience was not very good. And what helped me was to log into YouTube and to see “True Colors” sung by the Gay Men's Chorus. I remember that was back in 2009, and I was at SDSU then — I wished I was part of something like that. And it all came full circle last year with the creation of the Rainbow Chorus. Our vision is one where everyone is allowed to be their true, authentic selves. And what's great is we get to sing together, but we also have potlucks together and just hang out and form friendships.

Pictured: Kaela Schuiteman, local vocalist, educator and University of South Dakota music education graduate; performer with the South Dakota Symphony Chorus; frequent performer with local choral organization Transept; and artistic and executive director of the Sioux Falls Children’s Choir, a performance-oriented choral group open to young singers with unchanged voices providing opportunities to receive well-rounded, high-quality choral training complemented with performance experiences in a variety of community events (Credit: Peter Chapman)

How have performing arts been an outlet for you on a personal level?

BM: I was a very emotional kid, and a lot of my family members’ values were not to talk about our emotions. What helped me process my emotions were theater and music. I grew up on a farm, and I remember one of my pastimes was singing to the cows in my shelterbelt and just making up songs and whatnot. Through the darkest times, music has always been inspiring to me. And what's so great about singing in a group together is it kind of brings in all aspects. It’s all very full-circle, to sing with friends in that collective healing experience to all process all these complicated emotions that we have together. We actually can come together and bond and sing and heal just like I did when I was a kid.

KS: I similarly grew up obviously loving music. My family was very musical, so since I was a little kid, The Sound of Music was one of my favorite movies. Now my daughter is four and she's very into singing, so we're singing around the house and making up songs all the time. So it's been very much a part of my life forever. My best friend from school that I've known since second grade, we met doing music and we both continued to do it and still bond over that. And then of course college, when you're a music major and you're surrounded by it all the time, I mean those are my lifelong friends. You bond going on those trips, traveling the world and just having super emotional, intimate moments creating choral music together. I also met my husband in college choir. So obviously that had a very big impact on my life. And the friendships and the connection and the family I was able to find in college is something I could not have found without music.

DDK: I grew up in a musical family. We would sing as a family quartet in church, and in seventh grade I joined the Kansas Boys Choir, a choir of about a hundred members, unchanged voices. And that choral director inspired me to want to continue singing for the rest of my life. Really I attribute my career pursuits to her inspiration. In college, I was majoring in music and business and I thought I would go into orchestral management, maybe work for a symphony in a large city, the business side of symphony. My girlfriend at the time (my future wife) came from a family of educators, and she said, “Why don't you go into music education?” I finished the business minor and added the education major and after graduation went right into the classroom. It’s been such a blessing to get to play this role in young people's lives.

Pictured: Dr. David DeHoogh-Kliewer, professor of music and chair for the visual and performing arts with the University of Sioux Falls; instructor in conducting, music theory, music education; conductor of USF’s choirs; recipient of the “Encore Award” from the American Choral Directors Association - South Dakota; graduate of the University of Kansas doctorate of musical arts program; and South Dakota Repertoire & Resources chair for College and University Choirs (Credit: Peter Chapman)

How has the Sioux Falls Children’s Choir differentiated itself from other choral experiences?

KS: The choir is made up of unchanged voices, grades three through six, currently. And the goal is to offer young musicians a chance to get well-rounded, high-quality music education, and also to have performance experiences in a variety of community events and larger performances. They have performed in the past with the South Dakota Symphony, they’ve performed at South Dakota music conferences and actually this summer we're going to sing with the band, Foreigner. We're going to join them on stage to sing “I Want to Know What Love Is,” so really cool opportunities. It’s an educational experience that they can't get anywhere else.

We spend a lot of time with them on vocal technique, on breathing, on blending, working on singing range. A lot of times in elementary music programs, there is such a variety of things to learn. They're learning how to read music, but they're also learning about different instruments from around the world, and they're learning about musicals. It's just much more varied. So what the Children’s Choir does is just more specific — for kids who love to sing, who want to work on their instrument, who want to learn how to read choral music, who want to learn harmony. The third graders are learning two-part harmonies along with the sixth graders, and that's something they wouldn't get a chance to do in a typical classroom. And the excitement is infectious — they all feed off of each other and the excitement and the passion just really helps them create something they wouldn't otherwise get to do.  

I don't think there's another organization like us. The other children's choirs in the area are all in a church setting, so it's mostly just whoever's a member of that church is in it. This is the only secular group that is open to students, Sioux Falls and surrounding areas. So there’s a lot of potential to keep growing and there is a demand for it. I think just getting the word out is a big piece of it.

How has the greater Sioux Falls community received and supported your respective choral endeavors?

BM: I was pleasantly surprised by all the outpouring of support when we had our first concert last year. I was very nervous. We didn't sell tickets — it was a free-will-donation concert. We wondered if anyone was going to show up. Thankfully, Sioux Falls Pride helped us getting the word out there, and other organizations, like Transformation Project and SEPSA, all kind of work together and repost events all the time. Local groups like the Good Night Theatre Collective and The Premiere Playhouse donated fundraiser items for us, and so we're all helping each other out here. I was worried since it's such a progressive thing, but I'm so grateful to live in Sioux Falls because it's actually inclusive here. People show up for our events and sign up for choir — people are here to support us, and I'm so grateful for that.

KS: I also have felt a lot of support from the community. I think the group has a lot of room to grow. I'm surprised by the amount of people that hear about us and didn't know that the group existed. So that's kind of a hurdle — just getting the word out. But a lot of people are excited about it. Like I said, there's not really another opportunity for kids of that age to sing in a choir of such high caliber, and one that's just focused on choral music. I think we just are working to grow.

DDK: At USF, we're fortunate to have a built-in constituency of thousands of alumni, especially in the Sioux Falls area — but also alumni all over the world. That's one way we make connections when planning choir tours — to connect with our constituents who have been very supportive. We've been very grateful for invitations to performance series like the Sacred Art Series at the Cathedral of St. Joseph. We’ve been just so grateful for the outpouring of support for concert attendance.

(Credit: Peter Chapman)

How do you feel choral music has a positive impact on emotional and physical wellbeing?

KS: I think with kids, whether they're just not outgoing individuals or whether they're insecure with singing in front of other kids, you can just see that as they get to know each other as they perform together, they all kind of open up. You can see them change over the course of the year, just start flourishing into these amazing young people. And that's a lot to do with the relationships and the skills you gain — the confidence you gain by creating music together.

DDK: I'm teaching a course this semester preparing future choral directors to teach at the middle-school and high-school levels, and I make sure that the students know why people sing in choirs. They're in it because of the community that they get to experience. And so that's celebrated on our campus through many ways. We take an overnight retreat every fall, and it's really a community-building retreat. It's not a rehearsal retreat, although we do some singing, but I feel like people who know each other well perform together better. And so there's no secret that people are involved in choirs because of the way community is celebrated.

BM: The best part of our rehearsals is definitely the laughter. It's like high school in a good way, like giddy little school children when we have funny comments or someone messes up a note. We just laugh all the time. But once we sing out in harmony together, there's nothing more magical than that. A few members of our choir have gone through loss and grief, and our show this year is “Brave: A Journey from Darkness into Light.” It's been a healing process for some of our members. We go through the spectrum of emotions. And for me, personally, I feel so light afterwards too. Sometimes I wish our rehearsals were on a Monday because it would just carry me through the rest of the week. I just feel so good after rehearsal, emotionally and physically.

DDK: There's scientific evidence that, when people sing together, their heartbeats synchronize.

BM: I love that. Someone should write a choral song about that.