NEW YORK — The choir director from Port Angeles had a plan for bringing song to the 9/11 Memorial.
Jolene Dalton Gailey, who traveled with 120 Port Angeles High School students to New York City to perform in three cathedrals last week, also shepherded her singers onto the plaza where the Twin Towers stood.
On Friday afternoon, the 48-voice Port Angeles High Symphonic Choir formed a semicircle near one of the plaza’s deep pools.
The coordinator of musical performances at the 9/11 Memorial had said 120 singers was too many, so Gailey tapped just one of the five choirs and asked the rest — the Men’s and Women’s choirs, the Bella Voce ensemble and the Vocal Unlimited choir — to stand by.
To the Symphonics, Gailey said:
You cannot sing quietly here. This is where your song can touch people.
And when the singers began their set — a sacred song by J.S. Bach and Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More” — many from the droves of passers-by halted in their steps to listen.
Then it was time for the choir’s African medley, a piece that has Gailey calling out in a language from Zambia.
The rest of the choirs, all standing by, responded in kind, all 120 of them, singing to the crowd’s applause.
Afterward, the teenagers, wearing their black and Roughrider-green sweatshirts emblazoned with “New York on a Song,” talked about how it felt to be on this site where nearly 3,000 died Sept. 11, 2001.
“It’s an energy here. I felt it when we started singing,” said Kayla Munger, 15. She’s a member of the Women’s Choir and was ready to join in when Gailey gave the call.
The whole idea, Kayla said, is for people to come together, especially here at the memorial.
The performance made Gailey weep a little bit; she found it even more moving than the choirs’ concert at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday.
“This is a tribute to so many people,” she said of the memorial plaza, where two deep pools mark the footprints of the towers.
Around the pools are black granite ledges engraved with the names of the trade center workers and firefighters who were killed when the World Trade Center was attacked.
These teenagers were very young Sept. 11, 2001, but they’ve grown up amid the aftermath.
“It’s important that we keep remembering, even though it was a long time ago. I don’t remember the actual event,” said Crissy Oman, 17.
To sing here “is an honor,” added 16-year-old Grace Sanwald.
On Saturday, all five choirs took part in their trip’s culminating event: the New York Heritage Festival competition at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, a cathedral on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
“I’m insanely nervous,” Maizie Reidel, 16, said as she awaited her cue to sing with Bella Voce.
One of the things her choir is working on is infusing its songs with more emotional expression.
The choir members sing in English and French, in joy and lament, and Maizie adores it all.
The singers spent five days and nights in New York City, for which they raised $1,600 each through concerts and car washes over the past year.
The trip was jammed with experiences: the Ellis Island Museum, the Statue of Liberty, the Broadway musicals “Aladdin” and “On the Town,” Rockefeller Center and Times Square, dining at La Mela (The Apple) in Little Italy and, to wrap up Saturday night, a Circle Line cruise in New York Harbor.
For Maizie and her friend Mackenzie Cammack, also 16, the highlights came on Broadway and 42nd Street. Mackenzie was dazzled by “Aladdin” and got to meet the dancers after the show — a few of whom, it turns out, are from Seattle and attended the Cornish College of the Arts.
“So, people make a living from singing and dancing and doing what they love,” marveled Maizie.
“I can go somewhere with this. I kind of have to.”
Gailey, along with some 40 chaperones — students’ parents and grandparents — watched over the grand adventure.
And while the glamor is nice, Gailey believes the songs are what lasts.
She selects challenging works and teaches her students to perform in Latin, German, Spanish, French, English and a couple of African languages. And when they stand together, their voices join as one.
“There will be times in your life when you’ll be struggling,” Gailey said.
“This music will wash over you.”
Making music, she said, “gives such a sense of purpose. You are connected.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.