Choir eases transition of boys to men

It started three years ago. A strained note here. A moment’s hesitation there. “I could feel my voice beginning to change,” Andrew Huerta recalls. “I could still sing well, but it made me nervous and scared because I thought I might lose that connection to everyone and everything I had done.”

Andrew, who was 12, feared he soon would be forced to give up his place in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. Over the years, he knew, many boys had left the chorus in what had become a sad rite of passage. “I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have the music and these people around me,” he says. “This was like my second family.”

As it turned out, Andrew was lucky. Aided by ingenuity and initiative, he managed to sing in the chorus’ elite Concert Choir for another year and a half. And during what he presumed would be his final season, LACC made a long-hoped-for announcement: It was creating a group for boys with changing voices. “I was so relieved,” says Andrew, now 15 and a bass. “Just in time, there was a way for me to stay.”

The Young Men’s Ensemble, launched in fall 2009, presents what director Steven Kronauer calls “a whole new set of opportunities” for singers whose maturing voices push them out of the traditional treble range of the children’s chorus. It offers the intensive instruction in performance and theory for which artistic director Anne Tomlinson’s organization is known, he says, “while focusing on the changing voice, with the priority of ensuring vocal health and singing efficiently without forcing things. We also want to help our guys feel comfortable during an already complicated time in their lives.”

The desire to hit angelic high notes is a legacy of Europe’s centuries-old boy choirs, as is the practice of asking boys to leave once they no longer can produce those notes. America’s boy choirs and girl-heavy children’s community choruses remain devoted to the treble sound. But an increasing number, including LACC, are trying to support singers with changing or changed voices, either through special programs -- the Colburn School of Performing Arts also has a Young Men’s Chorus -- or by working with them within existing programs as the Indianapolis Children’s Choir does.

“There’s been a pendulum shift in society and in music,” says Francisco J. Nunez, founder and artistic director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. Many choruses are more open to new ideas and “diversity, which can mean allowing someone ‘different’ into your choir” -- including someone whose voice is changing. TV’s “Glee” has made it more acceptable for boys to sing, he adds. Plus, organizations are recognizing that retaining older boys benefits both chorus and chorister.

Indeed, says Kronauer, without options such as the Young Men’s Ensemble, kids who outgrow their choirs face the prospect of being cut off from a world they love. Some quit singing, take a break until their voices settle or, he says, “they may go somewhere where they are rushed into singing in a way that’s not healthy for them.”

YME began with 20 boys drawn from the chorus and its alumni. This year, there are 26, including several from outside. During auditions, potential ranges were evaluated. “We help find where their voice is settling,” says Kronauer, a former boy soprano who became an operatic tenor, conductor and teacher. “Most start in the middle as baritones,” while some go up to tenor or down to bass.

Voices don’t change in the same way. “Sometimes it’s abrupt,” he says. “Sometimes the range just slides down slowly. Also, the voice has many variations of weight and color -- any of which can be affected.”

Ensemble members practice weekly at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, LACC’s home base, and also receive individual and small-group coaching. “I see this as pre-college preparation,” says Kronauer. (Some students plan to pursue music majors or careers; most say they will keep singing throughout their lives.) He adds that a repertoire “designed to build technique with vocal health in mind” and performance schedule are gradually being developed. “We’re still new at this, so it’s step by step.”

At a recent rehearsal, the boys -- most in jeans and faded T-shirts -- warmed up with earnest efficiency, led by Kronauer, an ebullient man in khakis and a striped shirt. The room took on an academic air as they sat and analyzed the text of “There Is Another Sky,” one of a set of Emily Dickinson-inspired songs written for the group by Nicholas Nicassio. “Anything you do, it should start with the text,” said Kronauer. “Now we’re ready to sing.”

The boys spaced themselves out on risers but -- at their director’s urging -- clustered closer together as they sang and he exhorted and advised. They began the piece with precision and grace. By the end, however, the rich blend of voices had trailed into uncertainty. Kronauer took them through the final passages again. “Let me hear basses.” “Now, baritones and basses.” “OK,” he said at last. “We’ve got it.”

To complete the session, almost like dessert, came Bellini’s arietta “Vanne, o rosa fortunata.” The boys glided along, unable to keep their heads from bobbing. “Lovely,” Kronauer cried. “Isn’t this fun?”

The Young Men’s Ensemble made its debut last February in San Marino and also sang at a concert and master class with the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club and a spring LACC concert, where it was greeted with a wild ovation. Its second season opens next Sunday at LACC’s Winter Concert in Pasadena. Other events include the Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration on Dec. 24 at the Music Center, a master class with the ensemble Chanticleer and a March 3 master class and Pasadena concert with the U.S. Army Chorus. Last year, Kronauer arranged a conversation between his students and countertenor David Daniels. Next month, they will meet tenor Ben Heppner.

The idea of a changing-voices group took hold after the arrival of Rachel Fine as executive director in January 2007. She says parents kept approaching her about their sons. “I began to talk with board members who felt this question needed to be addressed. This wasn’t just a choral issue, it was an institutional issue. There were people who said we’re a treble choir, and that’s what we’re known for. But that wasn’t an explanation for me.”

The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, founded in 1986, includes six ensembles and more than 350 girls and boys, ages 6 to 18. Its singers have toured internationally and performed with companies such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Fine says a 2008 survey showed that besides regretting the loss of such opportunities, alumni boys “found their experience traumatic on many levels. They were going through an awkward physical change, while losing this training and this important network.”

Chorus leaders knew that starting an ensemble required a commitment to providing specialized instruction as well as emotional support for an unusually wide age range (preteen to 18). It also meant overcoming a big financial challenge. Like its other programs, YME is tuition-based, but it needed $130,000 in initial funding. “A passionate group of people raised a lot of money during a difficult economic time,” says Fine, who recently left the chorus and this week will become executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. “We were able to bring back families that we perhaps had disappointed and boys who felt they didn’t have a place.”

Andrew Huerta, who started with LACC in 2006, is happy to be in the ensemble. No more spending time at the piano “figuring out what I could and could not sing to avoid that embarrassing moment that can happen to boys in rehearsal or a concert.” Even so, the sophomore at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies says he sometimes wishes he could “sing high” because he misses “the people, repertoire and performances in Concert Choir.”

“Those feelings will change,” Nunez predicts. When his Young Men’s Chorus began seven years ago, he says, “no one wanted to be in it because our other choirs had the great concerts. Not anymore.” The ensemble performs 20 to 30 times a year and “combines amazingly with our trebles.”

“Our guys think it’s cool to be singing with guys,” Nunez says. “The alumni come back and say, ‘I started this,’ and feel really proud.”

Marquis Williams, a 16-year-old bass from La Canada Flintridge, joined the chorus when he was a sixth-grader and left in 2007 after less than two years. “It was my decision,” he says. “My voice was too low. I felt really uncomfortable.” He continued to sing at school, “but I couldn’t get that much knowledge about music and classical singing like I did here.”

Being in YME has allowed Marquis to reunite with old friends and enjoy a new sense of satisfaction. “I feel like my voice as a bass is a really good voice,” he says, “instead of something to be looked down on because it’s too deep.”

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