Sing On! Anniversary Series: Back Bay Chorale

Radiating community and joy, Back Bay Chorale sings on

The fourth installment of GBCC’s “Sing On!” series is a conversation with representatives from Back Bay Chorale, now celebrating fifty years since its founding by minister, musician and activist, the Rev. Larry Hill. Current alto section members, board members and volunteer leaders Judy Foreman and Kaylee Wallace shared the meaningful place that the chorale holds in their lives and for so many in the larger community. A brief history of the chorale penned by Judy for the season’s program books is available here.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. (Published: March 2026)

 

Alison LaRosa (General Manager, GBCC, she/her): How did each of you come to be connected with Back Bay Chorale?

Kaylee Wallace (she/her): I attended university in the greater Boston area and studied voice. I knew I wanted to stay connected to the music world after graduation. Back Bay Chorale was recommended by my voice teacher, who also has other students that are still in the Back Bay Chorale now. So that’s really how I learned about Back Bay Chorale. I auditioned the summer after I graduated and have stayed ever since. That’s seven years ago, in 2019.

Judy Foreman (she/her): For me the story is a slightly longer time ago – fifty years or so – and I don’t remember how I heard about the Back Bay Chorale. But I know I auditioned for Larry Hill, who was our founder. I guess he had a plethora of altos, so he made me a tenor. It was really fun to sing with the tenors! I would sing, and this great male sound would come out from all around me. And it’s a different harmony, so it was very interesting. And I’ve been there, though in the alto section, ever since. I think I may have missed the occasional concert, but not a whole year, ever. It’s a cornerstone of my life. It’s really important to me. It’s a community. When you’re one part in a chord, it’s really everybody together. It’s not about your ego. It’s a wonderful thing.

KW: I think Judy has it absolutely right. It’s the combination of high-quality music along with community, which is really special about our chorale.

AL: Was there something about the Back Bay Chorale’s mission that particularly resonated with either of you?

KW: Being able to learn and grow and use our shared love of music to produce something excellent, something that we get a lot of joy from, and hopefully get to share that joy with others, and spread that into our community is really something that I love doing.

JF: Yeah, you know, for a while, we sang at naturalization ceremonies for people who were becoming American citizens. It was just incredibly moving to be a part of something like that.  And at our concerts, our audiences seem to connect with us, and we with them, and it’s a really nice feeling.

AL: Which are your typical venues? I’m curious how that audience relationship might relate to the venues.

JF: In the old days, we sang at Sanders Theatre (in Harvard Square) all the time. Larry Hill went out of his way to make sure that people in wheelchairs could come, and they used to sit between the front row and the stage, so they were right up close. That was a nice kind of community thing. Now we sing all over the place.

KW: Yeah. One of my favorite venues is Old South Church, right in Copley Square. It’s always where our holiday concert is, and even if you don’t celebrate, it’s just the time of year where it’s starting to get cold, and it’s so cozy to come in and sing with 600 of your best friends in the room. And just the energy afterwards… to celebrate all the work that’s gone into it and to be in the center of Boston, in the Back Bay, our namesake, so, that’s a really cool venue, too.

AL: Excellent. So tell me a bit more about the different hats that you wear with the ensemble.

JF: I’m more involved now than I was earlier. I’ve been recently added to the board. Before that, I was on the committee in charge of recruiting new people for the board. It’s fun to try to think of people in the community who may not necessarily be singers, but who could branch out for us. I’m just blown away by how hard the board works. I mean, I never thought of the Back Bay Chorale as a business, but it has to be a business, and the board works really hard, which I never appreciated before I was on the board, but now I do.

KW: I’m also on the board, for two years now. Before joining the board, I was part of the search committee that hired Steve Spinelli as our music director – an absolutely incredible find! And now I am part of the fiftieth celebration committee, some may say, the party planner. Basically, finding small and large ways for us to celebrate and take a moment to reflect on all we’ve done and all we can do.

AL: That is a big job.

JF: Kaylee has done a fabulous job, I have to say. And the search committee did an amazing job. I mean, Steve Spinelli is a find. He has a wonderful personality, a huge knowledge of music. He has a perfect personality for us. 

AL: I’ve not had the pleasure of working with Steve, so I’m excited to get a chance to hear him conduct. How long has the organization been planning for the fiftieth?

KW: It’s been on everyone’s mind, leading up to the technical fifty years since the first concert (2023), but with delays from the pandemic, and then we were amidst our search for a new conductor… we just wanted it to be a time when we could really, truly celebrate.

JF: Right.

AL: So Judy, you remember Larry Hill. I saw on the chorale’s website him being described as a “musician, minister, and social activist”. Tell me more about him and how his background helped shape the chorus.

JF: Yes, Larry was amazing. He was a chaplain at Harvard, and this was back in the Vietnam War days. He was really active in protesting that, and he was a real social justice pioneer. He was really accessible, and he was fun! Larry’s widow, Joan, is now 90 years old, and she came to our big sing-along of the Mozart Requiem last Saturday. We’ve done two sing-alongs so far this year, and they’ve been so inspiring and spectacularly fun. And she came, and it means a lot to her, too. Steve introduced her, and she had tears in her eyes, and she loves that we were honoring him and her, actually.

AL: That’s wonderful.

KW: It was always on our minds to honor Larry, honor the beginnings, and what better way to do that than at the exact place where that first concert was held (Church of the Covenant, Boston), where it all came together, and by singing the same piece that they sang fifty years ago? It’s one of the nice things about music: this dichotomy of being fleeting – live music is only there for a minute – but it can still be passed down across the years. You may not have the same experience, but you can have a very similar experience as the original eighty choristers did fifty years ago. We always wanted to honor the roots by making that a free concert that people could just come to and participate in. In the fall, we did a post-concert reception where we brought out some of the chorale’s posters from the ’80s and ’90s, to trace how far we’ve come. And all of that started with Larry.

AL: Wonderful. Kaylee, you said that the choir was always quite big from the beginning. Like, eighty members strong?

KW: A hundred people came out to audition from a flyer that was posted, and then eighty ended up singing in that first concert (see Boston Globe article at the end of the interview). So yeah, we’ve always been pretty big.

JF: And, you know, we’re an audition-only group, so that says a lot about how many wonderful singers there are in Boston to get eighty people at the first go. And that’s what is interesting about these sing-alongs we’ve been doing this year, because there’s a lot of people in Boston who’ve been in a choir before and maybe don’t have time for it anymore, but people came to these events just to sing again, in a concert setting.

KW: And honestly, I was skeptical about five hundred people singing melismas at the same time, but it sounded great!

JF: We have to admit, though, that there was, as Steve pointed out, a Doppler effect.

AL: They’re such beloved pieces, so it’s great that folks could come out and enjoy participating in it. Tell me about a favorite performing experience that you’ve had with the chorale.

KW: I love the holiday concerts. I think those are always a favorite, because people are so engaged. But aside from that, one that was particularly memorable was doing the Brahms Requiem in Sanders. I think it was in 2022, and this was our first masterwork, big-scale piece that we’d done since Covid. That piece is just so incredible. It’s so choral-centered. You’re singing for seventy minutes straight, with not much of a break. And the acoustics in Sanders are wonderful. Seeing everyone come back out into the community after the pandemic was just really special. I remember tearing up at the end of that, being like, “Hold it together, we’ve got to get through this last moment.” But yeah, that was definitely a big one for me.

JF: And we sang that piece at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard for Larry Hill’s own memorial service. We’ve sung it a couple times since, including at my husband’s memorial service about a year and a half ago. I always have a little trouble getting through it, but it’s really such a gorgeous piece. It’s sort of emblematic of the chorale, in a way.

KW: I was lucky enough to be at that service to support Judy. I think the Back Bay Chorale took up half of the room at that event. It’s not just those Monday night rehearsals and those concerts, you know. It really is a year-round, all-the-time community that you make here.

JF: We have shown up for a number of things. We were at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade in 2013 for the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And when there was the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, we were already doing a concert, and we added a special piece to commemorate the Sandy Hook people. We do show up… music crosses barriers more than anything else I know, and it was just wonderful to be able to do that, both for ourselves, and for the people who came to hear us.

AL: Yeah, very healing. To turn to a different topic here, talk to me about a time when the chorus faced some challenges, and maybe it was something you were around for, or maybe it’s just something you’ve come to learn about in the history of the group, and how did the chorale overcome those challenges?

JF: Well, I would say one of the big challenges for us and every singing group in the country or the world was Covid. I felt very, very proud of our group and our leadership. At that point, Scott Allen Jarrett was our conductor, and for at least a year we met by Zoom just about every Monday night, and we’d have some eloquent person giving a lecture about, for example, choral music in South Africa, and playing some of that. We turned it into an educational experience. We also tried recording ourselves by some modern contraption, and it was really hard to get the tempo right and the tuning right. That didn’t work as well. But we stayed together as a group through those Monday nights, which was amazing, because we could have fallen apart, and we didn’t. That was due to Scott, the board and others chipping in. That’s my most memorable example. Kaylee, you may have another one.

 

KW: That is definitely the one. And it wasn’t just the quality of the response and being able to engage in music in a way that you wouldn’t normally get to. You normally don’t get to do as deep a dive into the history behind the music, the context of the music. So that was really exciting, but it was also the speed in which all of this programming was spun up. Lockdown was in March, and by that September, we had a full plan of every single thing that was going to be happening for the next year or so, and how we were going to stay connected and learn and still be in this community. So I think that, again, is a testament to all of the hard work that leadership at the time was doing.

JF: I mean, that community thing is big, not just that we like to connect with the larger community, but we are ourselves a community, which really matters. It was incredible, the way it worked out.

KW: But we were so happy to be back singing.

JF: Oh, yes, wow.

AL: That is a perfect segue into the next question about community, which we’ve talked about a bit. One aspect of community building I’m really curious to hear more about is the Bridges program.

KW: Bridges has become an integral part of our choir. It started in 2013 as an outreach program to bring music to folks who might not otherwise get to concerts. This partnership with the Boston Public Library has since evolved into an opportunity for members of our community who are ESOL, who are here trying to learn a new language, to be able to do so through song. That’s really exciting and so necessary, especially in this particular climate, to have a place where people from all over the world can come and learn something new and talk and build a community. They come and they sing with us on our holiday concerts, but they also have their own concerts of music they’ve been working on throughout the year. I was really lucky I was able to go hear them last year. It was in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library, and it was a perfect, spring Boston day, you know, when the frost has dissipated, and the birds are chirping, and you finally feel like you can leave your house without wearing fifteen layers! I got to go and listen to this choir and share in all that they’ve accomplished. It was just such a lovely way to celebrate the joining together of different cultures and different communities through song.

JF: In the early days of Bridges, we worked with people who had Parkinson’s disease, and they formed a group called the Tremble Clefs. We did at least one Christmas concert with them, and it was wonderful. They sang some songs with us, and a few by themselves, and it was terrific. It’s been very, very gratifying for everybody.

KW: And in recent years, Riikka (Pietiläinen Caffrey) has been the Bridges Program’s conductor and event coordinator, and she has done a wonderful job getting the music, getting it prepared, getting all of the harmonies together in time, and that’s been such a great addition for that program.

AL: Was the larger chorale singing at the naturalization services an outgrowth or precursor to Bridges?

JF: It was part of Bridges. It was so moving. The naturalization ceremonies themselves are moving, but we felt real ownership in being part of that. It was great.

AL: Is there any other aspect of community involvement that we haven’t discussed yet that you wanted to?

JF: Well, our new sing-alongs are definitely a big thing for the community. At the Fauré Requiem earlier this year we had five- or six-hundred people, and last Saturday for the Mozart Requiem we had a similar number. 

KW: And then another piece that recently has come to the forefront is education and educational opportunities. One of those is our conducting apprenticeship that was just started this year by Steve. We were able to kick it off as part of the fiftieth anniversary, and that is a wonderful opportunity for a student to come and work with us and conduct a group of our scale. There aren’t a ton of opportunities to help foster up-and-coming conductors in their careers, getting them the experience, getting them the recording practice, getting that experience working with all different types of people, people of all ages, and I think that is really special.

JF: The current apprentice, who goes by Slava, is from Boston Conservatory, where Steve teaches. We get to see Steve give Slava pointers and teach him how to conduct. It’s fascinating to me, watching the students take on his advice. It’s been wonderful to see Steve actively bringing along younger people to be conductors, while also just being a great conductor himself. And he’s let Slava conduct in concert, not just in rehearsal, which is huge. That’s fabulous training!

KW: Yeah, because practice is one thing, but being able to get up there when you have an audience of hundreds behind you and still be able to get that experience is so valuable, and it’s wonderful that Steve is sharing that with others.

AL: How would you say that being a member of our Greater Boston Choral Consortium community has helped you? You mentioned earlier how sometimes singers will be recruited because they heard about the chorale on the GBCC website, but I’m curious to hear more.

KW: One wonderful thing about the consortium is just the fact that it exists, and the fact that we have so many people in the Boston area that are interested in choral music and interested in this shared passion that you need a consortium to help organize and connect people with resources and with each other. It is so meaningful to us to just be a part of that.

AL: It’s definitely one of the things that I’m so proud to be a part of, and to think that we’re even barely scratching the surface with our eighty-five members. There’s so many more out there!

KW: It’s truly incredible. Like, so many people you can nerd out about Mozart with, you know?

AL: Exactly! It’s not like that in every place I’ve lived.

JF: That’s one of the things that makes Boston special. It really is.

AL: So I understand that the chorale has a long history of commissioning new works, and I saw, in particular, your carol commission competition. What are some of your favorite pieces that the chorale has commissioned?

JF: Didn’t we co-commission a Caroline Shaw piece?

KW: Seven Joys, I think it was. That preceded my time by a year, but I remember people loved that piece.

JF: Yes. Caroline is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

KW: And just to expand on the carol competition: carols are something that are so traditional, but having this new perspective on it from fresh, young composers, is a cool juxtaposition of ideas. You never know what’s going to be the next Wexford Carol in two hundred years, and it’s great to be a part of fostering that new creation.

AL: How long has the carol commissioning been going?

JF: This is our first year…

KW: …of hopefully many!

AL: Oh, I didn’t realize it was a new thing!

KW: We were really stacking everything for this fiftieth year.

JF: It’s also Steve’s energy and new ideas that he has brought to the chorale.

AL: Fifty years is such an incredible milestone – it’s not easy for any performing arts organization to get to that milestone – so why do you think it is that yours has been going so strong?

JF: Because we all love it! Even when there have been shaky times, there’s such a commitment to the group. We’re really an entity. I think nobody in the group could imagine it not being here, and we would fight like crazy to make sure it did stay. I know there are a number of people like me who have put the Back Bay Chorale in their will to make sure that it can keep going. And that feels good, to know I’m doing my part to keep it going as long as possible.

KW: I think, for me, it’s two things. First, it’s so meaningful to take two hours out of your week, and just focus on something beautiful and share that with other people. And I think that’s what brings people back is that, even when it feels like the world is going crazy around you, you can come and have just a little bit of joy in your week. We rehearse on Mondays, and there are some days where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I have such a tough week ahead of me.” And I will go into choir feeling stressed or overwhelmed. And I always leave rehearsal feeling happy and a little bit more relaxed about things. It’s funny, my fiancé will comment on it, that I’m in such a good mood when I come home from choir. It’s noticeable!

JF: Monday nights are guaranteed joy.

KW: Exactly, and it becomes, like, a need. I think that’s beautiful. And the other thing that’s so unique in a community organization like this is that you have people in all different seasons of life. You have people that just graduated from college last year, you have people in grad school working on their theses, and you have people on the opposite side of the spectrum who are caring for their grandkids or visiting grandkids on weekends. I get to be best friends with people from all different walks of life, and that’s just so unique to have a place where that flourishes.

AL: When you think of the next fifty years for Back Bay Chorale, what do you think will be different? What do you think will be the same?

JF: Well, I think the group will sing more modern music, in addition to the traditional warhorses.  I love the Fauré, the Brahms, the Mozart, but lately we’ve been doing more modern pieces, and it’s stretching us in a way. So, I would hope that in the next fifty years, we continue to do both. The old favorites, and some new stuff. And Steve has been very good about bringing in composers we hadn’t sung before, like Florence Price, and giving stage time to composers who missed out on that kind of recognition earlier. I think that will be something going forward, too. But I just hope we keep going pretty much as we are, which would be great. I suspect we’ll be all looking at music on our iPads rather than actual music. But by and large, you’re singing, it’s your voice, you’re singing with other people. How far can that change? Hopefully not too far.

KW: And I think to Judy’s first point, about that balance of repertoire… There are the crowd favorites that people have loved for centuries now, but one thing I love about the direction that Steve is taking us is highlighting these underrepresented composers whose music is incredible, and giving them a stage and a space where we can celebrate these people. I think it’s really great.

JF: That’s right.

KW: And I hope in the future that the chorale is still the mix of people from, as I said, all seasons. I hope that I’m still here in fifty years singing with the group! But that same sense of intergenerational joy that we can share – I really hope that stays the same. 

AL: If Larry Hill were here today, what do you think he and earlier members would find most surprising about the chorale today?

JF: Well, speaking as an earlier member, I’m thrilled! I’m thrilled that we’re still here and thriving, and loving it, and we’re growing in directions I wouldn’t have predicted thirty, forty, fifty years ago. But there’s a coherence to the evolution of us, which is great, and I think if Larry Hill were here, he’d be thrilled. And proud, and just delighted with where we’ve taken his idea.

KW: I don’t know if this would be “surprising” but we have to give credit to what Larry Hill built, to the fact that we still have a lot of people who were there during the Larry Hill days. We have Judy, we have Betsy Groves, who was there, I think, for one of the first concerts. Even my fiancé’s uncle, who sang in the chorale with Larry, now comes to all of the concerts. I think Larry would be pleasantly surprised by the breadth of community that has come out of this.

JF: Yes.

AL: And so, what are you personally most proud of in your association with the chorale?

JF: Back Bay Chorale is a fixture in my life. It’s really important to me. I miss it during the summer when we don’t meet. It’s an anchor, it’s community, it’s church… it’s my people.

KW: You stole my answer, Judy! No, I think there are so many spaces where you can make wonderful music, but I think it is this particular space with this particular collection of people that I’m so incredibly proud of. I feel I’ve already made lifelong friends here, and I think Judy has shown that you can make lifelong friends here. The kindness that people show each other makes me even more proud to be part of this organization, even more so than the music.

AL: And with all the wonderful things you’ve gotten out of being in this chorale, and lessons learned through your involvement with the chorale, what advice would you give to someone who says today, whatever their background – maybe they are, like Larry, a social activist, or a minister, or a musician – and they say, I want to start a chorus in the heart of the city today. What advice would you give them?

KW: My first response would be, join us!

JF: But also, go for it!

KW: It is a good question. I think I would say… make your mission very clear, and your people will find you. I think our mission has been clear for fifty years: let’s make great music, and let’s do something good for this community and the greater community beyond that. That has, over the years, attracted wonderful people. Find the voice that you want to give out to the world, and people will come.

JF: And basically, bottom line, make it fun. That really matters.

KW: Yeah, keep the joy. You need to have joy.

AL: That sounds delightful. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention that we haven’t talked about?

KW: We are culminating our fiftieth season at Symphony Hall.

JF: It’s a partnership with Boston Conservatory and Boston Children’s Chorus.

KW: It’s going to involve circus performers, dancers, an orchestra and at least two hundred choristers, maybe more. It’s going to be a huge production! I think that’s a testament to Steve and his creativity, and to the organization for supporting a crazy endeavor like this. I’m still unsure how we’re going to fit everyone on the stage at Symphony Hall, but it’s gonna be so fabulous, and really, a big community event that I hope a lot of people will come to and enjoy.

JF: Yes, thank you for remembering that. It’s going to be May 1st. We’d love to fill Symphony Hall. It will be such a tribute to the music community in Boston. 

AL: Sounds awesome! Thanks for putting in that plug. It  has been such a pleasure to speak with you both, and I wish you and Back Bay Chorale well on the rest of your anniversary season.

Join with the Back Bay Chorale community as it concludes its fiftieth anniversary season on May 1, 2026, at Boston’s Symphony Hall with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in partnership with the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Click here for more information.