Twenty-five years ago this month, the Virginia Glee Club toured the South. Among other stops on that august journey, we found schlonic columns in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; sang a church service in Atlanta, Georgia; improbably survived a day off in New Orleans; and sang in the state senate chambers in Jackson, Mississippi, where a UVA Law alum named (equally improbably) Hob Bryan had served since 1984. He remembered the Glee Club and its performances of “the Ave Maria” from his graduate school days, and invited us to sing when he learned we were on the road.
Twenty-five years later, and the current group was on the road in the South once again last week. No North Carolina stops this time, but visits to Chattanooga and Johnson City, to Birmingham and Mobile, and to New Orleans, and to Atlanta to rehearse with the Morehouse Glee Club. And a return to Jackson, where Hob Bryan still serves and where the Club once again performed the Ave Maria. That’s them below.
Many things have changed in the intervening twenty-five years (though the use of the Confederate battle flag in the Mississippi State Flag is not one of them). But I find it reassuring that this group of men, this “fraternity of talent,” not only has survived but also thrives, now backed by a strong endowment and an active alumni board. I find it even more reassuring that they continue to tour and to chart their own history.