In many ways, my artistic life began in choral music. I know — who’d have thought?
As a kid in Northfield, Minnesota, I dabbled in community theater between the ages of five and eight, but my first truly transformative experience on stage came in fifth grade, when I joined the venerable Northfield Boys Chorus. Suddenly I was touring the country by bus, singing on TV, and performing in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. — heady stuff for a kid, but more than that, it locked me in. It bound me to a kind of art-making grounded in discipline, deep attention, and that elusive magic only a well-directed choir can conjure: blending individual voices into one living, breathing sound.
I never let go of that. I kept singing in every choir I could find, inside and outside of school, all the way through college. The most life-shaping chapter came during my junior year abroad at the University of Salamanca in Spain. There, I spent a year singing with the Coro Universitario (50 voices) and co-founded the Coro de Cámara — a 20-voice chamber choir that became my second family. By chance, that year — 1985 — marked the 35th anniversary of the University Choir. Hundreds of alumni returned to that golden, 13th-century city to sing concerts, celebrate, share stories, and, in true Spanish fashion, dance and laugh into the early hours.
All that year, we toured Spain and Europe. I sang solos. It was mind-opening, soul-filling, life-defining — an experience that, looking back, set me firmly on the artistic path I’m still on today. The art was so powerful, so undeniable, that I knew: I want this.
And, of course, I wanted Martha.
Those two threads pulled me to Massachusetts a few years later, where we joined the company that would become UMO and began our real work as artists.
I started writing songs then. I found another community choir. I wrote vocal music for UMO, and for a decade, we worked hard — and beautifully — to sing as one ensemble, “6-as-1,” as we liked to say. Now, decades later, I have a catalog of 80+ original songs that I’m digitizing for the future, and I’m directing a small choir here on Vashon. Until this year, I hadn’t really seen that line — from boy soprano to ensemble clown to songwriter and choir director — so clearly.
Which brings me to why I’m telling you this: last week, I returned to Salamanca for the 40th anniversary of the Coro de Cámara I helped found, and the 75th anniversary of the Coro Universitario.
I can’t fully capture in words the depth of that return — I’m trying, in poems, recordings, new arrangements, new connections, and the seeds of future projects that might keep alive this life-changing bond with Spain. More specifically, with Salamanca, and with that particular band of singers — friends who remind me what lives well-lived can look like.
One moment sums it up: the final event of the reunion gathered 300 singers — current members and alumni — in a 15th-century chapel. Together, we sang pieces old and new, closing with a rousing version of Gaudeamus Igitur, a 13th-century hymn to the wild, joyful spirit of university life, set to music in the 18th century and sung ever since at graduations and ceremonies across Europe. The song praises learning, tradition, professors, students, country, and culture — in gorgeous four-part harmony. As we rose to our feet, students and elders alike, voices lifted as one, the air shimmered with reverence, laughter, and tears.
Afterwards, I tried — fifteen times — to explain to friends what that moment felt like, and not once could I do it without crying. I kept saying: “Back home, in this moment, what little culture we have is under siege. And here, this feels so… foreign. So gloriously patriotic in the best sense. It makes me feel so profoundly sad for what we’re losing — and so uplifted for what we could still be.”
The power of art, of collective creation, of voices joined in beauty and purpose — this is what we are capable of. This is what, now more than ever, we must keep alive.
The meaning I feel in this work has never been stronger. Thank you for being here with us, for caring, for staying in the work of making beauty together.
A Concert in the 15th century Hall of University Ceremonies, when the choir was awarded the Seal of the University - the third oldest in all of Europe.
Kevin with Bernardo Garcia Bernalt, who has directed the choir for 40 years without missing one rehearsal. His final concert was in June, 2025.
