Embodying the music
by Kate Frentzel
Theyâre engineers, teachers, IT workers, and speech pathologists. Theyâre graduates from four years ago and thirty-five years ago. Their circumstances and daily lives look different, but each Tuesday night, they gather at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Minneapolis to lend their voices and their spirits to creating transcendent music together as part of the National Lutheran Choir (NLC).
Founded in 1986, NLC has a national reputation for strengthening, renewing, and preserving the heritage of sacred choral music. NLC singers of all faiths perform this musicâfrom early chants to complex masterworksâwith a high level of technical skill, artistry, and meaning. And they share this gift of sacred music with audiences nationwide.
Luther grads in NLC really valued their time in choirs like Nordic, Cathedral, Collegiate, and Aurora. Theyâve been happy to find that, while NLC is its own unique experience, it also mirrors the connectionâto people, music, and worship, however itâs definedâthey felt during their choral experiences at Luther.
Luther is the best-represented college in the choir: a whopping 13 of its 62 members are Norse. Why do so many Luther singers find their way to this new community? What do they bring to it? What does it give to them? And, singing together, what do they offer the wider world?
A new choral home among familiar faces
At the beginning of each season, NLC members meet for a daylong retreat during which new members are introduced. Choir director David Cherwien, himself an Augsburg grad, says, âOne of the first things that usually gets announced is where they went to college. When the Luther people come up, thereâs a massive uproar. Itâs always fun to watch the face of the person coming in, because they donât really know yet how many people from their college are in the group. So when you see and hear that, itâs pretty overwhelming.â
He continues, âItâs fun too that they kind of divide themselves into groups. I was a Weston Noble singer. I was a Craig Arnold singer. I was an Allen Hightower singer. We have all of those in our ranks.â
While Luther alumni may be surprised at how many Norse are in the choir, most audition for NLC knowing that Luther grads gravitate there. Maybe they already had friends in the choir. Maybe a Luther professor pointed them toward the group. Regardless of how they heard about it, most auditioned for NLC because they were looking for community, high-caliber singing, and spiritual engagement with choral music. In those areas, NLC canât be beat.
Will Heller â16 was well aware of the choirâs reputation even as a Luther student singing with Cathedral Choir his sophomore year. âWe actually performed at the church where NLC rehearses. That was how I learned about them, because my more musically savvy friends were all abuzz when we were at this church. There were rumors left and right. Oh, I hear this is where NLC rehearses! I hear that their director will be at the concert! It went so far as I hear they have their own private jet!â
They donât, for the record, have a private jet, but the rumors speak to the perceptionâand the realityâthat NLC is an elite group of volunteer singers who make sacred music at a very high level. Thatâs part of what attracted Travis Karstad â00 to the group. He was living in the Twin Cities with two Luther alumniâincluding fellow NLC member Brian Lensch â00âwhen the three of them decided to audition. âI was familiar with NLC and the high quality of sound that they produced,â he says. âI was in awe of it then, and I still feel that way now.â Heâs been singing with NLC since 2001.
Eli Pollock â08 had been searching for something like his college choral experience. He says, âI realize now that the college experience can never really be re-created, but NLC and the Lutheran choral tradition that it holds feel like home to me.â
Sarah (Bane) Olson â07 sought out NLC for similar reasons. After graduating from Luther, she says, âI had a choir-sized hole in my heart. . . . Itâs coincidental that the choir I ended up finding my new choral home with was a part of the Lutheran choral tradition, but Iâd like to think that the Holy Spirit had something to do with that fortuity.â
For many singers, however, the Lutheran choral tradition is the draw.
Singing spiritual music
âMy main interest in joining was the religious aspect of the choir,â says soprano Emily (Lillegard) Tryggestad â07. âThereâs something sacred in choral singing that canât be achieved through secular music.â
âItâs a lot of the music I love and have a deep spiritual connection to,â says Allison Alpers â12. âOne of the things that NLC does really well is explore spirituality through music and what that means for different people, because weâre not, by any means, all Lutherans in the choir.â
Like many Lutheran choirs, NLC begins each practice with one of the singers offering a devotionâa brief reflection on the text the group will be singing. âIt gives a glimpse into whatâs going on in their minds and how theyâre connecting with the meaning of the program,â Cherwien says. âAs the person who puts these programs together, one thing Iâm careful not to do is dictate what theyâre going to mean. People perceive different things in the common song that weâre singing. Thatâs actually the way art needs to work, because people perceive art through the lens of their life experience, and devotions give us a little glimpse of that. Itâs always fascinating. People are at radically different places with their faith or what they believe or what theyâre thinking about, and this is a place where diversity can shine.â
âThere have been times when a song, the lyrics, or even a devotion from a fellow singer pull on my heart strings, and itâs those times when you truly know why youâre there,â Lensch says.
Tenor Shaun Halland â00 says, âI connect so strongly with the texts we sing, and one canât help but emotionally engage with the music. Life experiences continue to shape the music we make and provide renewed meaning to music that was written ages ago.â
âWe get to mean what we sing.â
From the annual All Saints concert to locking eyes with an elderly audience member while singing âIt Is Well with My Soulâ during a tour in Arizona, most Luther choir members can name NLC singing experiences that have moved them spiritually.
Heller points to a Midwest tour during which the group performed the âHoly Spirit Massâ by Kim AndrĂ© Arnesen at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Notre Dame, Indiana. In that piece, Heller says, there is an Agnus Dei, which translates to Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Heller hears this as a cry for peace. It was the groupâs first stop on the tour. Theyâd spent eight hours on the bus.
Heller says, âIâd never been to Notre Dame, I was geographically confused, and Iâd left a score on the busâmy very first performance on an NLC tour. The fifth movement sort of erupts in a very particular moment. It was one of those moments I really couldnât help feeling deeply. It was this call for peace in the middle of a really hectic day. I remember after the concert walking back to our changing rooms when I ran into Brian Lensch. He said, âHey, I thought we did a good job.â I was clearly out of it. He said, âOh, youâre feeling it, arenât you?â And he brought me in for a hug.â
Cherwien says, âI think what distinguishes us as an adult performing choir is that we are unabashedly meaningful. In other words, we mean what we sing. Actually, our phrase is we get to mean what we sing. The choral music world is such that you could find enough to love in the music alone. But we get to go to that next layer of owning the meaning that so much of it is. The group finds deep meaning in our programs, and they look for it, and then we get to own it. We get to embody it.â
This is, Heller says, what motivates him as a singer, and the personal, emotional experiences just happen to derive from it: âAt the end of the day, Iâm embodying the music so the audience can have that experience.â
There for each other
âThereâs nothing like making music with other people,â Cherwien says. âEspecially vocal music. I know instrumentalists donât like to hear that, but there is a difference: in singing, the vibration is internal.â
A growing body of research suggests that group singing produces physical effects from increased endorphins to reduced stress hormones to syncopated heartbeats and breathing. Luther NLC members report these and other benefits.
Alpers says, âEven if itâs an intense rehearsal where weâre really focused on learning music and maybe not making music quite yet, itâs still so mentally engagingâyou have to be in the moment where all of that mindfulness and grounding and other benefits from singing happen.â
Thereâs also the benefit of emotional support during some of lifeâs biggest moments. One ministry of the choir is to sing at the funerals of NLC singers and their family members. âA contingent of the choir sang at my motherâs funeral in 2012, which was so incredibly meaningful,â Halland says.
NLC members (and other Luther choir friends) also sang at Olsonâs wedding. âInstead of the pastor closing with a spoken benediction, my choir friends surrounded me and my husband on the altar and blessed us with their gift of song,â she says. âThey sang âThe Lord Bless You and Keep Youâ by Peter C. Lutkin. About a measure in, I was ugly crying. It was the perfect ending to one of the most special moments of my life.â
In a couple of cases, Luther grads met their spouses through the National Lutheran Choir, like Emily Tryggestad and former NLC member Soren Tryggestad â05. Emily says that they connected through the choir even though they overlapped without knowing it at Luther. âHe remembers seeing me around Jenson, but I donât really remember seeing him. Thatâs not a sore point for him at all,â she jokes.
Making music in a time of pandemic
Ensemble singers and musicians are feeling the pinch of physical distancing in a unique wayâtheir art depends on being together. With singing in person no longer on the table, NLC members are turning to digital connection, even if it isnât quite the same.
They arrange regular virtual happy hours and connect through social media, but as a âvery, very relationalâ group, according to Cherwien, itâs been a struggle.
âWe really miss singing with each other. Our Tuesday nights anchor us, and Iâve felt a little lost without my weekly musical and social connections,â Olson says.
âI canât wait to sing again with my fellow brothers and sisters in the NLC,â Lensch says.
Members are drawing heavily on their library of YouTube recordings during this time. âIt doesnât replace breathing and vibrating together,â Cherwien says. âBut it does help with the music-making partâitâs all we can do right now.â
Luther singers are still finding opportunities to make music when they can. Tryggestad sings with her two-year-old, Lillian, and Olson sings with her young daughter, Silja. âItâs been filling the void of not singing with my NLC people during the pandemic,â she says. âIf Silja remembers nothing else about me in her old age, I hope itâs that we sang together. Planting the seed for a lifetime of loving music is one of the best gifts I think I could ever give her.â
Pollock, who teaches pre-Kâ8th grade music, says, âIt feels like it goes against most of my favorite parts of making music and being together with students, but Iâm doing what I can. I have a middle-school choir group that used to meet before school on Fridays. Weâve held a couple of online chats where we catch up with one another, and then we all sing a song togetherâwith everyoneâs microphone off because otherwise itâs a garble of sound. So far weâve sung âSomewhere Over the Rainbowâ and âHow Can I Keep from Singing?ââ
So how does a choir advance its art and its mission during a time when people arenât gathering in the same physical space? By continuing to connect with each other, even if that connection is digital. âThe time we get to spend together extra-musically is really something I cherish being a part of this choir,â Heller says. âBeing on a bus for eight hours, being at a hotel bar after a concert, the times weâre able to connect not just as musicians but as peopleâsome of my strongest friendships have been formed during those times. Thatâs how weâre able to come together as an ensembleâbecause weâre able to come together as humans.â