Centering Service and Community in the Youth Choral Academy Experience

How long have you led the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy (SFYCA)? And what got you involved? 

I have led the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy since its inception in 1998. My involvement came from a call from Dr. Royce Saltzman, one of the co-founders of the Oregon Bach Festival. Royce and Helmuth Rilling already had a successful and widely known conducting masterclass, but Royce especially wanted to extend educational programming to high school students.

I had been involved with the summer program at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, for 23 summers. Royce said, "I think you are the one that could possibly help bring this off musically, and I have a colleague here Dr. Richard Clark, who at that time was the director of choral activities at the University of Oregon and who was going to organize the program." 

I'm deeply indebted to Richard Clark, who conceived the Youth Choral Academy. He wanted it to be a serious undertaking for young people who would have exposure to fine choral music and understand some of the ethos of the Oregon Bach Festival, which is that we use music as a bridge to build relationships between people of all kinds and nationalities. And, as my mentor, Helen Kemp, would say, we want to enrich singers' bodies, minds, spirits, and voices with all their being. That is the philosophy that I have brought to the Youth Choral Academy. 

From the beginning, the other person who has been essential in our success has been my colleague Dr. Therees Hibbard. She has a unique pedagogy, which she calls BodySinging. She uses all the body, not just the larynx, brain and mouth to help singers understand and feel the music. 

It was that call from Dr. Saltzman that led to putting together a team, especially with Dr. Clark and myself, but also with Dr. Hibbard, to create what has now been the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy. We are going into our 27th season in the summer of 2025. We've made some modifications, but the basic structure and Dr. Clark’s vision undergirds the running of the Youth Choral Academy and its success.

SFYCA participants engage in a unique full-body singing method with instructor Therees Hibbard.

What keeps you coming back? And why do you think this program stands out as an experience for high school choral singers?

I keep coming back because we seem to attract wonderful young people to this program. Therees Hibbard has often called the SFYCA "an All-State choir on steroids." I think that's quite a good description. It's an intense period. 

We do some Bach with these young people, which is not being done very often these days at enough high schools. There's the challenge of, can we nurture a younger generation with an appreciation of this great music? With SFYCA, we also look beyond the Western canon of choral music and learn music written from other cultures and from more contemporary periods.

This stands out because high school-age programs at major music festivals tend to be for singers who want to develop as soloists—and then sometimes they are put in a choral situation, and they still sing like an ensemble of soloists. Other festivals also don't have the same level of interaction with the professional musicians that SFYCA musicians have at the Oregon Bach Festival. 

While we encourage free, healthy singing, we want young people who want to come together and sing in a community. There are opportunities for them to be featured as soloists in both their finale concert and SFYCA Soloists event. The SFYCA Soloists is a public recital to allow the top dozen or so young singers to be featured as soloists. I love the opportunity to come and work with young people who love singing, are willing to work hard, and want to achieve musical excellence at their age. They experience the level of success that we see in the professional singers and instrumentalists who comprise the Oregon Bach Festival. So that’s where we are distinctive.

What are the highlights of the 2025 Academy that you’re most looking forward to?

We do some type of Bach work with the SFYCA every summer. We are singing BWV 129, Gelobet sei der Herr, mein Gott in 2025. We will perform music by Alice Parker. We also have the joy of collaborating with one of our artistic partners, Craig Hella Johnson, in his work Considering Matthew Shepard. We will take an excerpt of that piece, and Dr. Johnson will conduct it in our final concert. To experience that piece is something. It's an incredible work!

And I'm especially excited by the chance to feature the music of a dear colleague and longtime friend, Dr. Rollo Dilworth. Dr. Dilworth has finished a composition called Weather in the last two years. A Yale professor wrote the libretto for this piece, and the work takes its text from two prominent and colliding events in our recent history--the murder of George Floyd and the intersection of that event with Covid---how Covid was handled in our country and its effect. I performed this piece with Dr. Dilworth on the piano in a small chamber version at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 2024. It's very moving and bookends nicely with Considering Matthew Shepard. It provides another look at social justice issues in our country this time of race, this time of how you look at a pandemic, and how the impact it has had on our nation and our world, and so often, you know, choral music is maybe one of the last platforms in our society where people can come together. They may have very different views on politics, faith, or other things, but they work for the common good, and both pieces do that. In addition to working with SFYCA, Dr. Dilworth will deliver a Hinkle Distinguished Lecture entitled "The Weather Report" as part of his residency at OBF to recreate this thought-provoking composition.

SFYCA students perform as part of the Oregon Bach Festival with professional instrumentalists and soloists.

What do you enjoy about forming a cohesive ensemble of young people who've never sung together in such a short time?

It is wonderful to see young people get excited about creating choral music. Many of our young people who come to this program are the leaders in their choral programs. But then they come together with other leaders. Over 10 days, they live together, eat together, study together, and sing together to become a community. They learn to share their gifts, be humble and appreciate others who share their interests. This ethos is the philosophy of both the Oregon Bach Festival and SFYCA, and what has kept me coming back is that this is not the platform for divas.

The co-founders of Oregon Bach Festival, Helmuth Rilling and Royce Saltzman, were true models of servant leaders, and we create great art and music in service to a world that needs to hear this beauty. Not just of sound but the beauty of thought. We seek to be a community that breathes together, sings together, and creates beauty for others.

What do you hope participating singers will gain from their experience working with you and being immersed in a community of professional musicians and attendees at the Oregon Bach Festival?

First, they come, and they're treated with great respect by those of us who are part of the SFYCA faculty and staff and the festival's leaders. The patrons of the Oregon Bach Festival greatly admire them. They are respected for their artistry and influenced by collaborations with the Festival Chorus, Festival Orchestra, and the University of Oregon Chamber Choir. Having these models with whom they often perform side by side raises them to a different level of musician than most are accustomed to. 

The soloists who often perform with us are the same soloists performing on the Oregon Bach Festival stage. There's a new bar set for these young singers. Still, one of the things that I want them to see about the Oregon Bach Festival is that sense of being the servant leaders, the servant musicians not doing this for their egos but doing this because they can make the world a better place, and that's something they're amid the ethos of this with these other people who comprise the Oregon Bach Festival.

We teach so much more than just music. We expose these young choral singers to different cultures and languages at this festival. We inform them about issues they may not know about back home. When they are here this summer, as they learn Considering Matthew Shepard, they will gain awareness and understand the impact of discrimination against a type of person because of their sexual orientation and the inhumanity of that. We're not trying to convert people, but we are trying to sensitize people to be kind and good citizens of the world. 

As they sing Dilworth's Weather, we will have another perspective about how we care for each other. It's one way they can contribute positively to society, and when they go home, they go back less entitled and more grateful. They go back with humble hearts that want to do good for the world, using their art and their gifts to bring beauty and goodness into the world in which they live. We work in all aspects of the Oregon Bach Festival for excellence, and we work not just for the beauty of music but also for that excellence, that self-discipline that you need as a musician to re-create a great work of art, that is a self-discipline that you can apply to other aspects of your life.

What information is important to know about the audition process?

First, follow the instructions. Sing a piece that will show us the beauty of your voice and the level of your musical artistry. I would much rather hear a beautiful folk song sung, and I know my colleagues who assist me with these auditions feel the same way. They want to hear a voice free in production with a good sense of pitch and free release. We want to hear the best from everyone so that we can make an informed decision. Take the necessary time, and do not do this in a rushed fashion.

How does the experience of SFYCA impact participants as they go on to future endeavors?

Now that we're over 25 years of existence, what I am seeing come to fruition is what Helmuth Rilling and Royce Saltzman had hoped would happen. That is, we'd nurture a new generation of people who would take part in the arts or become supporters of the arts. Seeing several young people who have sung in SFYCA and are now singing in the professional OBF Chorus or who have gone on to sing in the University of Oregon Chamber Choir and many other choirs fulfill the founders' dream. I am blessed to have several SFYCA alums come and study at St. Olaf College. I have at least three in the St. Olaf Choir presently. To see soloists now at the Oregon Bach Festival who are alums of SFYCA or who I’ve encountered professionally on the road is very satisfying.

I'm running into SFYCA alums more and more. This past weekend in Colorado, I had a young woman who shared that SFYCA was the seed that made her want to become a music educator. So many are like that and continue fulfilling the vision that Royce and Helmuth had. Seeing them making such positive contributions in their communities and the world and realizing that you've planted a seed or had a small part in that is very rewarding. They're just better human beings because they have come and been part of the Oregon Bach Festival and SFYCA. That's what I'm most proud of.

The 2025 Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy, a program of the Oregon Bach Festival, runs June 28-July 8, and is open to high school students finishing the 9th through 12th grades. Auditions are now open through April 5. Visit the SFYCA website to learn more and apply.

This article is sponsored by the Oregon Bach Festival. Thank you for supporting the partners that make Chorus America’s work possible. If you are interested in learning more about sponsored articles, please contact us at [email protected].