There is one music group at Buena Vista University that stands out among the rest. It has a complex history and recently experienced a revival under new direction. It is the Vista Singers. Chris Phalen is the Director of Choral Activities and Assistant Music Professor at BVU. Being the choir director, Phalen leads the concert choir, which any student of any skill level can be a part of, and also directs the Vista Singers.
“The Vista Singers are an actively evolving ensemble,” Phalen said. “They have never looked the same in the five years I have been here. We’ve ranged as large as 14 student and then as small as five.” The Vista Singers sing many genres including classical, jazz, and even pop music. “It evolves to meet the needs of the choral program and really to best highlight the strengths of the singers that are in the group every year,” Phalen added. This ever-evolving group of singers is the only auditioned ensemble at BVU, which leads to more excellence and makes it a tighter community.
Long before Phalen started working at BVU, the Vista Singers were purely a jazz choir ensemble until they became dormant.
When Phalen came to BVU, he wanted to revive the former glory of the Vista Singers. “Towards the end of the fall of 2021, I started meeting with students outside of class on Friday afternoons because we didn’t have choir, and said if anyone wants to come sing in my office, I will buy them a coffee after. So, we would get together and sightread music for an hour, hour and a half, then we would go down to the coffee shop and buy folks coffee.”
These singing sessions are what restarted the Vista Singers as Phalen decided to make it a standard ensemble.
A unique aspect of the Vista Singers is the student-led aspect of the ensemble. “Each semester as we’ve grown, the students have taken over more and more of the responsibility of rehearsing… They rehearse as a group without me; they plan extra things together… It’s a flexible group that allows us to dig into music in a way we don’t get to necessarily in concert choir. It’s a lot more student lead.”
Since the Vista Singers are an auditioned group, there are certain things that make a “Vista Singer.” Phalen talks about how the group members need to have the ability to sight-read, practice and recognize areas that need work, but more importantly, it is about their attitude and desire. “A desire to do more” is one aspect that Phalen talked about. There is a larger time requirement for Vista Singers when you consider they meet an additional two times a week on top of the three days choir meets. They also do work outside of rehearsal that requires a person with a strong passion and dedication to singing. He also said members need “a desire to do things independently.” The group may spend more time rehearsing outside of class time than in scheduled rehearsal, so it is important that those members take that initiative.
Phalen, along with the students in Vista Singers, have shaped what the group is today. But he didn’t do it without influence.
“If I could point to a model that I use for the Vista Singers when I’m picking music, rehearsing music with them, the style of trying to make everyone equal partners in the music making process, I model that a lot off of a group that I am a part of called Vox Peregrini,” Phalen said. “This choral pilgrimage choir was formed in 2015 by my teacher, Dr. John Wiles. The way this group meets each summer to rehearse music in a new part of the world is the model that I use when working with the Vista Singers.
In practice, it is a more collaborative model of music making than the traditional conductor and choir top-down approach. With Concert Choir, most musical decisions are made by me and shared with the choir. With Vista Singers, we are able to be more collaborative where singers give input and are part of the decision-making process,” Phalen added. This inspiration helps guide Phalen when leading the Vista Singers and lends to a very unique experience both being in the ensemble and for those watching them perform.
One student in the Vista Singers is Hannah Malloy. Malloy is a junior psychology major with minors in social work, gender studies, and communication. Malloy joined because of her passion for singing and music. “I really like to sing, and I felt that concert choir wasn’t challenging enough and I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I could do more… I liked the community it had and saw how well everyone in the previous semester worked together and I wanted to be a part of something like that,” Malloy said. Phalen talked about how the group is student-led and community-driven, and Malloy’s experience reflects that. “The most important part of it for me is that sense of community,” she added.
Malloy also described how the group succeeds. “Having that sort of sense of community makes us closer as people and friends which makes our end performance a lot more successful.”
Phalen strives to make the group student-led, which Malloy supports. “He doesn’t really treat us as his students, but more someone he works with which makes it a lot easier to learn because I feel like I’m not being judged, I feel like he is there to help me instead of pick out everything I’m doing wrong — helping me to be a better singer in general.”
The Vista singers provide a unique experience to those that are in the group and the BVU community. As Phalen said, it is an ever-evolving group that proves to keep outdoing itself.
