Tuesday night at First United Methodist Church, Terry Barham directs the A Cappella Choir and ESU Community Chorus at the Fall A Cappella Showcase. Jennifer Baldwin/The Bulletin

Emporia State’s A Cappella Choir will end the academic year with a nine day trip to England. This is the seventh time that the choir will travel to Europe, the most recent being three years ago.

“It is an amazing transformative experience for singers,” said Terry Barham, choir director. “It’s a silly thing to say, but it is not like Kansas, it is not like any church anywhere around here, to be able to sing at some cathedrals. It’s a great growing experience – it sort of opens your eyes.”

The trip will cost roughly $2,498 for each of 36 singers going on the trip and the expenses will primarily be covered by fundraising.

“Over the years, I’ve watched what works for fundraising and what doesn’t,” Barham said. “So we have a marvelous fundraising committee this year.”

Some of the fundraisers include selling cookie dough, environmentally friendly water bottles, citrus fruits and the Adopt an A Cappella Singer program, where people can sponsor a choir member by donating money.

“I would love for people to participate in the Adopt-an-A Cappella program, because that’s the hard part, is coming up with all the money,” Barham said.

Barham said that each choir shares different chemistry, which makes each trip different.

“Every trip is unique because it is with a different group of people,” Barham said. “This year, we have just a superb choir, a wonderful bunch of people and a lot of new people this year. It will be very different because it’s different personalities.”

While the choir will have three performances, two formal and one informal, this is not the complete focus of the trip.

“I’m not one of those that goes and says, we’re going to sing every night we’re there, that’s not the point,” Barham said. “The point is education and cultural growth.”

Molli Chitwood-Roberts, junior music major, who attended the New York City trip with the choir last year, agrees that this year’s international trip boasts more than performance opportunities.

“It’s cool, just having the experience of not necessarily just singing in other places, but seeing other places and experiencing their cultures,” Chitwood-Roberts said. “I’ve never been to Europe so I’m really excited about that and I think just seeing all the sites that have been around for centuries will be kind of exciting.”

Where performing is concerned, Chitwood-Roberts said that unfamiliar places and audiences offer performers a fresh outlook on their own music.

“It’s really amazing to sing in a huge church and hear the echoes and different sounds that you hear other than what we have in Emporia,” Chitwood-Roberts said. “Also, seeing how other people outside of Kansas and outside of the United States are affected by our music… it affects them a lot different than it does the people here in Emporia.”

Not only does traveling allow for individual growth, it also serves to unify the choir in both social and musical aspects.

“I think that spending an extended period of time with a group of people that you like makes you bond in ways that you can’t bond just seeing them every day for an hour,” said Russell Swanson, freshman music education major. “I think that to have a more unified tone, you have to bond in some situations, so I think the bonding will help our tone.”

Speaking from experience, Chitwood-Roberts emphasized Swanson’s point.

“It really brings a sense of unity to the choir, that you don’t really go to these places every day,” Chitwood-Roberts said. “It brings us closer together and makes the music that we perform mean something a little more because we’ve shared an experience together that we haven’t shared with other people.”

Sarah Shaw/The Bulletin

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