The CSS Choirs Performing at O Holy Night, December 2024
As this extraordinary academic year comes to a close, we celebrate not only the concerts performed and the milestones reached, but the community we built through daily choices to show up, work together, and lift each other higher.
Our students accomplished remarkable things this year — not just musically, but personally and collectively, living out the Benedictine Values that guide us at The College of St. Scholastica: Community, Respect, Love of Learning, Hospitality, and Stewardship.
Prism and Homecoming
We began our year with a our annual Prism Concert, celebrating all of the music ensembles at the College of St. Scholastica. The energy was high as we were excited about the possibilities of our academic year, which was just getting underway. Immediately after, the choir sang the National Anthem at the Homecoming football game, bringing spirit and connection to our wider campus community.
Vivaldi’s Gloria
In October, over 150 high school singers and instrumentalists from Duluth East and Denfeld High joined our CSS Choirs and Orchestra to perform Vivaldi’s Gloria, a work rooted in the vibrant history of young women at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, where Vivaldi once taught and composed. This project reflected not only our commitment to community and hospitality — welcoming and connecting with the next generation of musicians — but also our love of learning, as we explored the historical significance of this powerful music.
O Holy Night
Our annual O Holy Night concerts were some of the finest in recent memory, selling out both nights and running with exceptional smoothness. These performances demonstrate how collective dedication and stewardship of the CSS Choir legacy leads to results that serve and inspire our broader community.
Community Building: Messiah Singalong, Bring the Sing, Honor Choir, Still I Rise, and Visiting Ensembles
In December, we partnered with Borealis Chamber Artists for a community Messiah Singalong, a tradition going back more than 40 years at CSS, inviting all to raise their voices together in celebration of Handel’s masterwork — another clear reflection of our Benedictine values of community and hospitality.
Messiah Program, 2024
We welcomed visiting choirs from Cromwell, Spring Lake Park, Superior, Proctor, Minneapolis Southwest, Two Rivers, Roseau, Barron Area Schools, Denfeld, East, and Drake University, and Oak Land Middle School, among many other individual visits by students to our campus. Each exchange reflected the power of hospitality and the shared joy of community music-making.
In March, we hosted our annual Bring the Sing in collaboration with Minnesota Public Radio, which was coupled with our second annual CSS Honor Choir, which saw more than 70 high school singers gathered on our campus for a day of connection and music, demonstrating the vibrant community we are building and our open-hearted hospitality toward future generations of singers.
April brought more collaboration where Bella Voce delivered a powerful performance with their Still I Rise program. CSS hosted St. Micheal Albertville High School and the University of St. Thomas, showcasing how choral music can serve as a catalyst for activism, hope, and social justice.
Taking the Stage: Collaborations with the DSSO, Cantus, Composers, and Augsburg University
This year was a remarkable year for collaborations. Concert Choir took on the challenge of singing Brahms’ Nänie and Manuel del Aguila’s Barelas Choral Suite, in collaboration with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, pushing musical boundaries and rising to the occasion with excellence.
Dress rehearsal with the DSSO, April 2025
Our Chamber Choir had the privilege of performing on the same program as Cantus, one of the nation’s premier vocal ensembles, and engaging with hundreds of tenor-bass high school singers from across rural Minnesota.
Working directly with composers Charlotte Botha and Shruthi Rajasekar, our students had the rare opportunity to explore new music firsthand — deepening their inquiry skills, solving complex musical challenges, and creating powerful performances.
We closed our year with Songs of the Earth, a concert celebrating music from over ten languages and cultures — a true embodiment of the value of hospitality and our mission to celebrate global diversity through shared artistry.
Pilgrims of Hope: Italy 2025
One of the defining moments of our year was our nine-day tour of Italy. We sang in historic sacred spaces, from Florence to Assisi, Rome, and Montecassino, including the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Chiesa di Sant’Anselmo all’Aventino, the crypt at Montecassino where Saints Benedict and Scholastica are buried, and the Sacro Speco cave at Subiaco. Students connected deeply to our Benedictine heritage — standing, singing, and praying in the spaces that shaped the heart of our College.The echoes of those performances and the relationships made will stay with us for a lifetime.
Closing Thoughts
Throughout the year, our students lived out the Benedictine Values not through grand gestures, but through daily choices: showing up, learning deeply, serving one another, and lifting their voices together.
They demonstrated that leadership often looks like quiet service.
They showed that beauty created together is stronger than anything created alone.
They proved that the ripples of hope and connection we send into the world matter.
The result of these small choices were grand experiences. In a time marked by division, these choir students are a living example that through community, respect, stewardship, hospitality, and love of learning, we can build something beautiful.
It has been an extraordinary year.
