Photos by Taylor Campbell

Singing Michael Trotta’s “Requiem” is nothing new for University of Alabama at Birmingham senior Sierra Frazier. After all, as a member of the UAB Concert Choir, Frazier has been performing the 40-minute composition on a regular basis ever since the choir gave the piece its debut in 2022 at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center.

But on all those occasions, Frazier never felt quite like she did this past June while vocally riding the lush harmonies and soaring melodies of the piece. That’s because this time, Frazier was singing “Requiem” inside a 151-year-old church in Rome, surrounded by rich history, magnificent mosaics, and absolutely exceptional acoustics.

“All of the sudden I looked at my friend and started crying during the performance,” said Frazier. “We’d come so far, all the way to Italy, which a year ago I never would have thought would happen. Just being there in that moment was very emotional for me.”

That is the type of life-changing experience the UAB Department of Music looks to provide by taking students on performing tours outside of the U.S. In addition to this year’s trip to Italy by the Concert Choir, members of the Department of Music organized excursions last year to Wales for the UAB Gospel Choir, and to Colombia for the UAB Jazz Ensemble.

“The power of music is so strong that it can transcend language and conflict and so many other things,” said Department of Music Chair Patrick Evans, D.M., M.M. “That’s what we’re all about. We’re not just training our students to be skillful musicians. We’re preparing them to be citizens of the world who can change the world for the better.

“But that is hard to do when you haven’t seen the world. Many of our students haven’t left the country, and some haven’t even flown before. Knowing the world is an important part of your foundation not only as a musician, but also as a well-rounded person.”

UAB Choral Director Brian Kittredge, D.M.A., agrees. He made a similar touring trip as a college student, and says it was “an experience that transformed my life.”

“I want to give that same type of fantastic experience to our students at UAB,” said Kittredge. “There is nothing like singing in a Gothic cathedral in Europe. These spaces are hundreds of years old with so much history and great acoustics. Nothing compares to that.”

Of course, such trips don’t happen easily. It requires a considerable amount of planning and preparation for the Department of Music to take its shows on the worldwide road. The trip to Italy, for example, resulted in a 58-page travel itinerary.

“We do regional trips all the time, but this isn’t like taking a bus to Huntsville,” said Evans. “There are a lot of logistics involved.”

In addition to such basics as reserving air travel and hotels and making sure the students have valid passports, there is the matter of securing multiple places to perform as well as transportation between venues. For some events, such as festivals and competitions, the Department of Music applies for participation. In other cases, there is a specific connection between UAB and the country that leads to performance invitations. Educational travel companies such as WorldStrides can be enlisted to help with coordination.

Still, despite all the groundwork, issues inevitably arise. In Italy, two local musicians forgot to bring their sheet music for one of the performances, prompting Kittredge “to try and find an open Kinko’s in Florence on a Sunday afternoon.” On another occasion, the group couldn’t get power to the church organ and lost 40 minutes of rehearsal time. In Colombia, transportation between cities was occasionally a challenge. And language barriers were sometimes a complication everywhere.

In the end, however, the magic of the music proved to be enough to overcome most obstacles, providing the students with the trip—and the memories—of a lifetime.

“It is one of the best experiences they will have in their entire life,” said Department of Music Associate Professor Steven Roberts, D.M.A., who participated in the jazz trip to Colombia. “They’ll never get to make a trip like this so carefree again, where somebody else takes care of all the details. Plus, it may be the first time they truly see themselves as a professional musician.”

Here is a quick look at some of the trips the UAB Department of Music has orchestrated in recent years:

The Gospel Choir in Wales

The 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four Black girls horrified not only the nation, but the world. More than 4,000 miles away, in the United Kingdom country of Wales, artist John Petts was so moved that he resolved to create a new stained-glass window for the church. The gift was meant to be both a replacement for one of the windows destroyed in the explosion, and a remembrance of the young lives lost.

People throughout Wales contributed money to the have the window transported to Birmingham and installed in the church in 1965, creating a bond between the country and the city that still exists. In 2019, a delegation of Welsh officials visited Birmingham for a ceremony at the church, and while in town they attended a concert by the UAB Gospel Choir. Three years later, a Welsh national college choir came to Birmingham for an Easter performance with the UAB Gospel Choir at the Alys Stephens Center.

So last year, it was the UAB Gospel Choir’s turn to make the overseas journey to Wales. The students met members of Petts’ family, sang in front of the prime minister and parliament, and performed in several cities. One of the highlights was participating in the Urdd National Eisteddfod, an annual Welsh-language youth festival.

“They wanted us to sing gospel music in the Welsh language. That was an adventure,” said UAB Gospel Choir Director Reginald Jackson, Ph.D., M.M. “We worked with a specialist who taught us the language. I tried to find easy songs that didn’t have a lot of words.

“It was just an absolutely amazing experience for everybody involved. We got to try authentic Welsh restaurants, went on tours, visited the national library. We gave a live performance that was broadcast on the BBC, and the audience loved it.”

Jackson says perhaps the most memorable moment came when the choir performed in a Welsh church. He had been told that while church services in Wales usually are solemn and quiet, officials wanted the UAB students to give the type of gospel performance that is typical in many U.S. churches.

“So we came in with drums and guitars, and we’re all standing and clapping and swaying,” said Jackson. “We were doing the improvisation and the call-and-response that are part of gospel music. We asked them to participate with us and enjoy that experience. We wanted to share the hope through the music. Sure enough, everybody in the church stood up and joined in. So through music, we were able to share this experience.

“It was life-changing for the students and all of us to do that. You get a chance to truly realize that the world is larger than just where you live. Everything about it is different—the food, the culture, even the weather—and it’s a learning experience. You try to find the things we have in common and build on that. You give yourself a chance to open up and learn. In every aspect, the students had an opportunity to grow by embracing the Welsh culture and music.”

And while the language difference sometimes made it difficult to communicate, Jackson says there was one word the people of Wales understood completely. “Whenever we said ‘Halleluiah,’ they knew what that meant.”

A Jazz Combo in Colombia

One of the primary challenges for these Department of Music trips is securing the funding to cover the extensive travel expenses for the students. The College of Arts and Sciences helps defray some of the cost, as do various fundraising performances and sponsor donations.

“We’re fortunate that the College of Arts and Sciences has invested in us and contributes significantly,” said Evans. “Then we do a lot of fundraising. We don’t want it to be where only the students whose parents can write a check for the full amount are able to go on these trips.”

Members of the UAB Jazz Ensemble have been able to defray the costs even further by, well, playing jazz. Numerous UAB students perform at restaurants and other gatherings throughout the year, and the money they receive from those gigs goes into an account that helps fund their trip.

That is exactly how recent graduate Amber Frazier ended up traveling through Colombia for nearly two weeks last summer playing bass as part of a UAB jazz combo. The group was participating in a jazz collaboration program organized by Colombo Americano, a non-profit center that seeks to promote cultural understanding between Colombia and the United States.

“The gigs that I played for UAB paid for my trip completely, except for my passport,” said Frazier. “It just shows that music can take you a lot more places than people realize.”

The connection for this trip began through UAB adjunct jazz guitar professor Carlos Pino. His family is from Colombia, and he makes frequent trips to the country to see family members and play on mini jazz tours.

Pino has taken Roberts on some of those trips. Several years ago, they decided to bring along a few students, including Kevin Leon, who went on to become drummer for the band St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Pino and Roberts returned to Colombia last year with a new group of music students.

“Our Colombian hosts were very interested in what we had to offer, because we’re coming from America, which is the birthplace of jazz,” said Roberts. “So in addition to playing concerts, we taught a master class nearly every day. It was a great opportunity. It put the students in the position of being teachers. They got to teach for a total of 20 to 30 hours to a variety of Colombian high school and college students.”

Frazier, who majored in music technology at UAB, said playing and teaching jazz music in another country proved to be a confidence-building experience.

“It was great to meet all these musicians in Colombia who have an interest in jazz and American styles of music,” said Frazier. “A lot of them were my age, and they were looking to me to help teach them the role that the bass plays in jazz. It was so eye-opening, and it really helped me gain confidence.

“One of the people who works for Colombo Americano took us out for a night around town. We went to a (soccer) game and did a lot of local things. That made the trip very worthwhile, along with meeting so many people with diverse backgrounds coming to see us perform. They didn’t know who we were. Just being from America made them want to come see us.”

That was evident when more than 500 paying customers showed up at a local concert hall to watch the UAB jazz combo perform. “The students don’t get that many people at gigs in Birmingham,” said Roberts. “It was more of a professional experience by far than they had ever been in. It was more pressure, but also more fun than the students have ever had.”

But Roberts says the moment he remembers most was a jam session involving the UAB jazz combo, another college combo touring the country from Purdue University, and local musicians who specialized in Colombian folk.

“Other than Carlos, none of us speaks great Spanish,” said Roberts. “So we would split up to teach our sections and be in this situation of trying to talk to each other. But we had some great jam experiences come from that.

“At the end, the teacher from Colombo Americano led us all in this big Colombian folk music jam session where everything kind of got blended into one big thing. We were more swing jazz and so was Purdue, but we did our jam over these very traditional Colombian folk tunes. It was a chance to see inside the country and have a real cultural experience.”

The Concert Choir in Italy

International travel is nothing new for the UAB Concert Choir. The group went on a European tour in 2014, winning gold and silver medals in three categories at the World Choir Games in Latvia. Then in 2017, the choir performed at festivals in England and the Netherlands with a lineup that included Christiaan Heersink—one of the children of Marnix E. and Mary Heersink, longtime supporters of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine.

“The Heersinks extended an invitation for us to perform in their hometown city of Velp and stay in their (16th-century) castle,” said Kittredge. “There were nearly 50 people on the tour and the Heersinks said, ‘The problem is, our place only sleeps 36.’ So a few of us stayed in a hotel.”

There were no castle stayovers on this most recent trip to Italy, but there were still plenty of amazing memories, particularly for junior-to-be Lena West and three other students who were presented with the honor of conducting the choir during tour performances.

“That was an amazing opportunity, especially for an undergrad,” said West, who conducted a piece during the Verona Piano Festival. “It’s something I’m looking forward to adding to my resume.”

As memorable as that moment was, West says what she most enjoyed was performing in such historic venues. The Verona Piano Festival was held in a courtyard of Castelvecchio, and the choir’s performance in Florence took place in the Basilica di San Lorenzo, which was constructed during the 1400s.

“I’ve sung in a lot of churches before, but never in a space with those kinds of acoustics,” said West. “They were built more for Gregorian chants as opposed to contemporary choral music. That was an amazing experience.

“The performance in Rome at St. Paul’s was interesting, because the doors (to the church) were open and people could come in and stay or leave as they pleased. I’d never been in a concert like that in an indoor church setting. It was such an amazing space, different from any I’d ever sung in before. I’m happy to have been able to perform in so many different places. It was a really eye-opening opportunity, and I’m just so thankful for UAB making it possible.”

Sierra Frazier agrees. She says the entire trip to Italy made her change her tune on the value of world travel, which she had never done before.

“It was a culture shock, but in a good way,” said Frazier. “I knew it would be an entirely different experience, but I did not realize just how big of a change it was going to be.

“I’ve set a lot of new goals since this trip happened. I’m the oldest of five grandchildren, and I’m going to push for the others to see the world. I want to share that experience with anybody I can, to know just how important travel is and how important it is to understand other cultures.”

Which, after all, is the chord the UAB Department of Music hopes to hit with these types of student trips.

“Of course we want our students to build their musical skills,” said Evans. “But we also want them to build those attitudes of heart and mind that help you be able to interpret great music, perform it, and share it with the world.”