Chester Children’s Chorus Makes Music Where They Can

The Chester Children’s Chorus is having small, distanced, outdoor rehearsals this fall. Photo: Rachel Pastan

Chester Children’s Chorus director John Alston and six teenaged sopranos are sitting under a canopy outside the chorus’s Park Avenue office in Swarthmore. Their metal folding chairs, draped with jackets and purses, are spaced 6 feet apart. This is only their second in-person rehearsal since COVID-19 shut them down in March.

“Any good news before we start?” Alston asks. 

One of the sopranos says she got a new job. It won’t interfere with rehearsal, though, she promises. “I told them I can’t work Mondays.”

Alston chats with the girls from behind an electric piano placed on the ground. He wears a plastic face shield with pieced-together bandannas extending below and beside it: an experiment in letting the singers see his face while keeping everyone safe.

“You look like a beekeeper,” a girl teases. They chat about basketball and cheerleading, as though this were a normal rehearsal. 

It’s anything but normal. But at least it’s a rehearsal.

When it’s time for the singing to begin, the girls open their sanitized white plastic binders of music. They follow along as Alston sings them the opening bars of “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas.”

The girls sing the lines back to him: “When I am laid, am laid in earth…” Their voices are muffled but sweet behind their masks. 

Before they try it again, Alston explains the story to make sure they understand what they’re singing. “It’s the most heart-breaking three minutes in all of opera,” he tells them.

They sing:

Remember me,
remember me.
But ah,
forget my fate.

“This one is for Breonna Taylor,” he says.

An Unusual Year

Alston founded CCC in 1994. He began with just seven boys, teaching them a few folk songs and how to read music. 

Now, 26 years later, CCC has become a large, complex, multifaceted organization. Music is the heart of what they do, but there is also an intensive, year-round math-practice program and a summer program featuring science and swimming in addition to singing. All the children learn basic musicianship and sight-reading. Advanced students study voice, piano, and music theory. 

In ordinary times, the 110 singers rehearse twice a week. Last year, they were preparing to sing Handel’s “Messiah” at a March 15 concert. The singers had spent nearly a year learning the music.

“When we shut down,” Alston recalls, “we were the best choir we’ve ever been. We had never sung with so much polish, understanding, and confidence.” 

When the concert was cancelled, Alston says he cried every day for two weeks. The following months were the longest he’s gone without making music since he was 11 years old and started singing with the Newark Boys Chorus.

“I cannot explain how empty I was,” he says. “How powerless.” He pauses, then adds, “Steadily, we are all finding our optimism again.”

Alston is thrilled to see the kids after the long months apart. But he is also keenly aware of what’s lost in only working with small groups at a time. “The altos will never sing with the basses, who will never sing with the sopranos,” he laments. “It hurts.”

And the logistics required to keep the kids singing — at least a little bit — can be overwhelming. With the chorus divided into about 15 small groups for hour-long rehearsals spread out across the week, there’s a lot more driving and a lot less singing. Van drivers pick up the kids and deliver them home again, the windows open and everyone wearing masks. 

“In a nine-passenger van, you will have one driver and one student,” Alson explains. “I say this quasi tongue-in-cheek: How many programs in the United States are providing one-to-one chauffeur service?” 

Growing Up in the Chorus

Skyy Brooks has been singing with CCC for nine years. Alston auditioned her when she was in second grade. He auditions every second grader in Chester, about 450 kids, going into schools and singing to the children, having them sing back to him. He offers spots to 40-60 students each year, of whom 20-30 accept, starting as third graders.

Brooks still remembers the thrill of getting that acceptance letter in the mail.

In those days, she was a student at the Chester Upland School for the Arts. Now, she’s a junior at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. She enjoys the challenge, and opportunities it affords, like singing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Her CCC foundation has given her both skills and confidence.

“I’m way further ahead than everyone in my class,” she observes. “At least in music theory and math.”

Brooks plans to major in African American studies in college. She hopes to pursue a doctorate in music theory and composition because “I feel like it would never get old for me.” She writes some music now, but is more interested in arranging. She recently arranged a version of “Moon River” and some Amy Winehouse songs.

Most of all, Brooks values the bonds among the chorus members. “I love all these people as if they’re my family,” she says. “We’re not here only for the music. We love the music, but we also love each other.”

For Alston, another reason the kids are there — maybe the main reason — is to give them a better chance to succeed in life. In a recent Zoom conversation with members of the Swarthmore College community, he told the largely affluent audience, “With the right combination of love and practice, our children are going to grow up, and they’re going to work with your children. Not for your children. That’s what gets me up every day.”

Joy

Junior Skyy Brooks plans to study music theory and composition. Photo: Rachel Pastan

Back at the soprano rehearsal, the singers have moved on from Purcell to Earth, Wind, and Fire.

“How many of you grew up with ‘Fantasy’ playing in your house?” Alston asks, cueing up the 1978 song on his phone hooked up to the keyboard amp, to let them hear the original. “Sing it if you know it!” 

The music fills the space under the canopy and spills out into the bright afternoon. “”We’re not doing this disco beat,” Alston concedes.

Some of the girls sing along. 

“It’s such great music,” one girl says. “Why couldn’t I be born then?”

“It’s like they’re all wearing bell bottoms,” another chimes in. 

The wind blows through the trees surrounding the canopy. No one can sit still. Everyone is tapping their feet, or tapping their fingers on their binders. 

And we will live together, until the twelfth of never

Our voices will ring forever, as one...

“This is part of our happy, upbeat music set,” Alston says, looking around at the group of girls he’s known for so long. Girls he first sang with when they were seven years old. Invited to join the chorus. Watched grow up. 

Six confident, accomplished singers who, behind their masks, are almost certainly smiling. 

Learn more about the Chester Children’s Chorus.