Over a wet winter weekend in 2024, dozens of Uniting Voices Chicago alumni were reunited for an emotional and magical evening of singing at our holiday concert, Songs of the Season. One of those alumni was Katie Moynihan.
Katie began with Uniting Voices in 2010 in the Pilsen/Little Village Neighborhood Choir Program and graduated in 2019 as a member of Voice of Chicago. After a gap year of singing and traveling, Katie attended Tufts University in Boston, specifically as a student in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. She graduated in May 2024 with a degree in American Studies. Over the summer, she worked as an organizer with the Arizona Dems and the Harris/Walz campaign in Coolidge, Arizona. Now, she’s back in Chicago with her family, looking for opportunities in the non-profit sector. We caught up with Katie at Songs of the Season to discuss what returning to sing with the choir meant to her and how the lessons she learned carried through into her university days.
Uniting Voices Chicago: What’s it been like to return to Uniting Voices and sing with this community again?
Katie Moynihan: It’s been awesome. This has been a really special experience for me, because the pandemic happened so soon after I graduated high school, I didn’t have that classic experience of returning to the choir to see all my friends, and see them perform, and get to do what all these more recent alums who came back after graduating. This is kind of healing me in that way.
I signed up for this by myself, without knowing if any of the alums I was close with were joining, but I said I’ll show up. Something that's beautiful about the choir is that people do it for so long, I did it for almost ten years, so you’ll come back and overlap with people who you sang with or people who were already alums. Coming by myself and realizing this is still a community for me and this will always be a place where I can feel a part of something has been great. If you want to come here, you can come here and enjoy. Even people who were alums when I sang like Vasil and Tramaine and Mitchell who used to tell us about what it was like in the 90s. Last night when we were rehearsing I was feeling very grateful to be able to come back, at no cost at this point of my life, to just come and sing this really hard piece of music with really talented musicians on a Friday night. That’s super special, and it’s an outlet and a resource I’ll have for the rest of my life.
UVC: Can you tell us a little bit about the piece that the alumni are singing, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms?
KM: I don’t remember if we ever did the whole piece when I was in Voice of Chicago, but we definitely did perform one or two of the movements. I remember coming home and showing my parents and being like, what, this is crazy. It’s something that I love about the choir: the high bar that they set for all of the singers. It’s kind of a double-edged sword because perfection doesn’t exist, but at the same, as a young person, it was really important to be taken seriously and have adults say you can do this, it just requires hard work and focus, but it’s completely within your capability. That’s something that I’ve always loved about the choir and always loved growing up. Just drive that Josephine Lee instilled in us, that we have a lot to prove, and just because we’re young people, that doesn’t mean we can’t do this. I feel a lot of pride to have learned this piece when I rehearsed and performed as a member of Voice of Chicago, and to return and have it under my belt as a piece of repertoire that I know. It came back to me just like riding a bike. I wasn’t sure because I sang soprano 1 in high school but sang alto in college, but I was able to sing soprano again on this piece.
UVC: How was your singing experience in college informed or affected by your time in Uniting Voices?
KM: I did a lot of different types of singing in college. I actually got involved with Village Harmony, which a former conductor and alum Mollie Stone was very involved in. They’re based in Vermont, so being in Boston I was close to that community. It was something the choir definitely branched me into. I was also in my college a cappella group and in a few choirs through the school. Nothing is quite the same as Uniting Voices but I appreciate how they’ve all informed each other. The choir set me up well with my technical knowledge, my theory knowledge, and my understanding of different genres and how they should be performed. I always felt confident in any singing setting and prepared to take on whatever I’m interested in.
UVC: Before you returned to Chicago, you worked as a field organizer. What is the biggest lesson that the choir taught you that has helped you in your professional life so far?
KM: The choir instilled in me a deep passion for civic action. I was involved in college with the Tisch College of Civic Life, it was a big reason that I went there. So the sense of social responsibility has been a huge throughline throughout my time in the choir and since then. It’s that kind of underlying understanding or belief that because I’m here, I’m responsible for the people around me, and the communities I’m a part of, and the well-being of communities outside of mine. It informs not only music, but my life, my work, and my relationships. I think it’s kind of a sneaky thing the choir does well, is that we’re going to get you there through music, but we’re gonna talk to you about more important things, like history, social change and your role in it. And that you have a role to play in it. Everyone does.
