Imagine you are 16 years old, a Black child from the South Side — your life’s explorations to date taking you as far away as Mississippi and Florida.
Then you find yourself on an airplane, jetting across the Atlantic Ocean. You journey to Egypt, take in the 5,000-year-old pyramids of Giza. There’s a cruise to Luxor on the Nile, the world’s longest river. Oh yes, and then you’re one of 60 Chicago kids performing in a choir at the Cairo Opera House.
“It was absolutely life-changing,” said Christian Hampton, 18, who made that trip two years ago and is now planning to attend the University of Miami, where he’ll study music engineering.
The folks who run Uniting Voices Chicago — a citywide youth choral organization with about 3,200 singers — feel pretty confident that they’ll be able to continue offering such “life-changing” opportunities, after announcing this week that they’ve received a $4 million gift from an anonymous donor — by far the largest gift the non-profit has ever received.
“We are thrilled that we were given this anonymous gift and someone recognizing us from New York City ... that they are recognizing the work that we’re doing,” said the organization’s president, Josephine Lee.
Among other things, the gift will “at least double” the available scholarships for domestic and international tours, a spokesman for the organization said.
The organization started out as a single choir — the Chicago Children’s Choir — in 1956 in Hyde Park. A key founding idea was to bring kids from across the city together through music. That’s still true today. But nowadays, the institution is headquartered at the Chicago Cultural Center and has a network of ensembles spread across 85 city schools and community-based programs in 12 city neighborhoods. Uniting Voices also has two city-wide choirs that meet downtown, including a “premier ensemble” for high-school age singers. The choirs have performed all across the United States and the world.
Hampton grew up in the Beverly neighborhood. He said music filtered into his life at an early age on Sundays at church. In fifth grade, he joined a musical ensemble at Poe Classical Elementary, before joining Uniting Voices in seventh grade, he said. He’s sung gospel, pop, classical — just to name a few genres.
In Egypt, he and other members of the choir performed alongside native singer and actress Nesma Mahgoub. Hampton used the term “life-changing” multiple times in describing his time in the Middle East and saying being in the premier ensemble “introduced me to a different level of performance.”
“I’d been learning about the pyramids since first grade. So seeing it in person was like, wow!” Hampton added.
He’s heading to Mexico on tour with his choir in June.
Kyra Woods, 33, a Uniting Voices alumna, has also traveled the globe with the organization.
“Music is a fantastic connecting point,” Woods said. “You learn music of a different culture, you go to festivals and you share yours.”
Given the fact that many kids in Uniting Voices come from low-income families, donations are “critically important,” she said.
During her time with the choir, donations and fundraising meant that she could “almost guarantee” her place on a domestic or international trip.
“So the ability to ensure that more kids have the opportunity to travel is great,” said Woods, now a climate and energy policy advisor with the City of Chicago.
