Stephen Kushner, choir director since 1987 and founder of the tour, believes that "students learning music also learn something about themselves and their connections with others. Going on tour gives them that experience in great depth. When they create something of beauty every night, they grow deeply inward." For this tour Kushner selected a program of twentieth-century music which "would challenge the choir musically, emotionally and intellectually." The program's centerpiece was Robert Convery's The Unknown Region, a setting of the Walt Whitman poem for choir, organ and string quartet. (The choir has premiered and recorded several of Convery's pieces in the past.) Also included on the program were other works by Lajos Bardos, Alberto Ginastera, Earl Kim and Jean Berger, as well as several African-American spirituals.

Before each concert the group spent several minutes in meditation. For each occasion Nita Pettigrew, a member of the English department who has traveled with the choir on all seven tours, composed a short reflection on which the musicians might center their thoughts.

This year, in addition to the requisite concert clothes and the traditional group journal, choir members carried an armload of disposable cameras supplied by the Communications Office. The group returned with visual and written records of the trip, excerpts of which are reprinted on the following pages. It is clear that the choir enjoyed their surroundings with the same energy they give to making beautiful music. One constant theme of the journal, however, is that the essence of the tour experience is beyond mere words and snapshots. The only way to catch that wave is to hear the choir sing.

CHOIR JOURNAL EXCERPTS:

Green ferns loom-static- (palms too) as buds by highway hills flash morning violet.
Last night, as we sang, I couldn't imagine anywhere in the world I'd have rather been than right there with you guys, singing.

I can't even begin to express how wonderful the concert was at The Mission. That was definitely the best "Unknown Region" has ever felt. The whole choir seemed to soar, our sound enveloping me, filling the painted walls, the carvings, the fountains, the audience . . . It was hard to stop myself from just laughing out loud with joy.

My host family's homegrown orange is delicious. Seems like California is an ORANGE state . . .
Allison and I just had the coolest host last night. She just graduated a couple years ago and she was in choir too! We got shakes and then talked the whole night about teachers and other gossip. Definitely fun. . . . Love California!

Everywhere we go there is something wonderful-absolutely lovely. At the Stahr's there was the beautiful beach-there was an enormous rock with two person-sized holes in the middle, and when you crawled through you could see this other rock with a gap in the middle-there was a slender bridge formed between the two halves. When a wave came in it would rush through the gap and explode on the rocks . . . Then we went to The Mission. Need I say more? The feeling of the cool water in the fountain on my palms, lying in the courtyard right before the concert, looking at the stars-everything in that place was perfectly beautiful. I like it here!

California is so beautiful. The Mission in Santa Barbara is one of the most tranquil places I've ever been. I'm at peace. Tour rocks. . . . I never want to go home. Choir tour is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Did you guys see the monk in the first couple of rows? He kept nodding and bopping his head when we sang. I think he wanted to stand at the end but couldn't.

The bus smells like fresh oranges and we're passing below huge green mountains on our way to Monterey.
El Camino Real paved in gold and pink plaster . . . old decrepit fountains . . . carpets of short gnarled trees lord gently over the foothills of Southern California . . . one lost cloud wanders across this sea of sky.