Twenty-eight students from Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges spent 12 days singing in Estonian, Lithuanian and Finnish this spring, performing in churches and schools across Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius before returning to campus.

The Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges departed in May, the day after Haverford's Commencement, for what associate professor and chair of music Nathan Zullinger described as a once-every-few-years international tour. Zullinger, who works out of Roberts Hall on Haverford's campus and has directed the ensemble for about a decade, built the program around a simple idea: sing music from each country in that country's language, for an audience fluent in it.

The group also performed several American spirituals, partly to mark the United States' 250th anniversary. European audiences, Zullinger said, expect them.

"If you don't do a spiritual, they're usually really mad at you," Zullinger said in a Haverford College feature published Tuesday, July 15. "American folk music has a distinctive sound and quality that, to them, is very novel."

Preparation was intense. Singers drilled pronunciation for pieces in Estonian and Lithuanian for months before the trip. Zullinger shuffled singers' positions during rehearsals so they wouldn't rely on familiar neighbors, preparing them for performing in unfamiliar spaces abroad.

Julia Freer '29, a Chamber Singers member who grew up singing in a children's choir in New York and later in an ensemble at the American School of Barcelona, said the group felt pressure to honor the music's origins. Many audience members became emotional hearing songs in their own language, she said.

One night stood out. After a concert at an Estonian school just outside Tallinn, hosts led the singers down a hill to a home-cooked meal and an impromptu lesson in Estonian folk dances in a courtyard under the stars. Haverford and Estonian students, strangers hours earlier, danced hand in hand. One student later told Zullinger the evening changed something in him; he had never traveled without his parents and had never strayed from a planned itinerary.

The international touring tradition dates to the late 1990s at Haverford. Professor Emeritus of Music Thomas Lloyd, who directed the choral program from 1996 to 2017, led 12 international tours to destinations including Mexico, Germany, Ghana, Turkey and Poland. Zullinger has continued the practice, taking the ensemble to Boston, Quebec and New York City on domestic trips between overseas tours.

Alumni donors Hugh Rosenbaum '60 and Philip Ursell '72 helped fund the Finland and Baltics trip, according to the college.

What's next

The Chamber Singers will perform at Bach's Birthday Bash at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Mass., on Sunday, March 21, 2027, at 4 p.m. The ensemble will join Worcester's All Saints Choir for a program of Bach cantatas. It marks the group's first invitation to the festival.