2024 Carl Schalk Honoree Interview
Naomi presenting at 2024 ALCM Conference: “Choir Participation: If and Why it Makes Our Hearts Feel Squishy and Twinkly.”
Lutheran Summer Music is pleased to present the recipient of the 2024 Carl Schalk Award: Naomi from Grand Marais, MN.
Carl Schalk was a teacher, musicologist, composer, and author whose legacy as a Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus at Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois, has nurtured generations of church musicians. Dr. Schalk also was deeply connected to Lutheran Summer Music, from its earliest days, to composing the arrangement of “Luther’s Morning Prayer” that the LSM community sings daily during the summer program. LSM has established this award in his name to recognize students who embody the same passion for church music, and by their desires to use their musical gifts to the service of the church.
Naomi, an organ, piano, and voice student, returned to LSM for her second summer in 2024. During her first summer at LSM in 2023, Naomi was inspired to offer a survey to her fellow singers in the Festival Choir, to dig into their joyful choral experience. This led to her presenting some of her findings at the 2024 ALCM Conference, along with director Dr. Shannon Gravelle, in a plenary session entitled, “Choir Participation: If and Why it Makes Our Hearts Feel Squishy and Twinkly.” Naomi shared elements of what makes a choral experience truly profound (community, purpose, aesthetics, and leadership), and encouraged the audience of church musicians to consider how their ensembles could grow as a ministry and community within their congregations.
We asked Naomi some questions to reflect on her experience at LSM:
How did you pursue church music at LSM 2024?
I took organ lessons, sang in chapel choir, played for a service or two, and, most importantly, secreted away every single evening prayer and Sunday bulletin to bring home and peruse. My favorite hymns and liturgies from LSM 2023 are catalogued by copious tiny sticky-notes in my hymnal. Eventually, though, I’ll get more sticky-noted pages than blank pages, at which point they’ll become relatively useless…
How do you pursue church music in your home congregation?
Naomi from Grand Marais, MN
I started taking piano and organ lessons simply because I liked music, but when my instructor, Bill Beckstrand, got ordained, I suddenly became a church musician… funny how that happens. Now I’m always working on a hymn or liturgy of some sort, and any “concert” pieces I work on inevitably end up as a prelude, postlude, or ambiance for communion. Bill has an endearing habit of occasionally putting me into the bulletin half an hour before the service, and the few times I’ve tried to “protest” by “forgetting my music at home,” I’ve ended up as a cantor. Of course, I pretend to be peeved, but music ministry is so fulfilling. I love every part of it—preparing the music and practicing with collaborators, riding the adrenaline of last-minute changes and improvisatory turnarounds (“the violist had a family emergency! Do you have your Debussy?”), and seeing the congregation visibly moved by the result.
Outside of my home congregation, I also serve two other churches in my city—one on a rotating roster of musicians (I pity the person who has to coordinate us), and the other as an occasional substitute.
What is important to you about the music of the church?
Guys, let’s be real. The Bible is dense. It’s long, the language is archaic, and to properly interpret it, we have to listen to sermons by people who have spent years studying it.
But then, lo and behold, there are hymns. Each rooted in the Bible, yet translating it into phrases and verses that resonate with our souls. Familiar tunes, cadences that let us feel the Word more than read it. Dances, chants, roaring proclamations—each one, in its own way, a sermon. A way to approach the Bible, emphasize what’s important, learn from it. Hymns are, to me, accessible interpretations of the Bible.
Besides putting the Bible into focus, I love church music for its history. Ranging from ancient liturgies to Bach to a guy my teacher knew from grad school, Lutheran church music overflows with stories. Participating in this rich tradition is a (humbling) privilege.
Finally, I love church music because it’s not about me. The goal of church music is not to impress; it’s to bring meaning to the congregation—and that can be done just fine while completely hidden by a Christmas tree.
One of my all-time favorite moments of meaning-making was when I had the treat of leading our congregation in the Taizé Magnificat, a delicious four-part canon. We had been trying to teach it for weeks, and after multiple Sundays of fumbling over Latin pronunciation, something finally clicked—each group really heard each other, the harmonies solidified, and the congregation washed over with smiles. In that moment, my leadership fell into the background—people didn’t need to watch my arm-flapping, didn’t need to strain to hear my Latin. That moment wasn’t about me; it was about the music’s meaning. That’s why I loved it.
How do your LSM experiences support your musical growth, and your connection to church music?
LSM has given me the opportunity to “see how it’s done.” Here, I can feel the Holy Spirit stir around every evening and every morning, fight back tears, feel myself fall a little bit in love with everyone in the room—and see the genius musicians behind it all. The proximity to musical greatness at LSM has shown me what I can work towards.
Besides simple inspiration, LSM has supported my musical growth in every conceivable way. Chad, my LSM organ instructor, is inspiring and kind and simply an outstanding teacher; the conducting elective has helped me gain church-music-applicable skills; singing in the chapel and festival choirs has nurtured essential musical abilities, from theory to sightreading to engaging with text; Cheryl Lemmons’ daily practice tips are some of the best advice I’ve ever received; taking the composition elective has taught me to put myself in the shoes of a composer—the list goes on.
Above all, though, LSM has given me a supportive community: a group of people who are always there to hold each other up, laugh with each other, belt out the window at one in the morning* together.
LSM has sent me home with so much more than improved musicianship and a bolstered repertoire. Over the past two years, I’ve come home with six plastic ducks, a hymnal full of sticky notes and a head full of ideas, a penny (if you know, you know), a determination to learn how to sight-read hymns while considering harmonic structure, a pencil that is certainly not mine, and some of my most cherished memories.
*Explanation: on the last night of LSM, students have an extended 1:00am “lights out” time, after a lock-in last night party. This year, at 1:00am on the last night, several students broke out into singing.
Naomi will return to LSM in 2025 for her third summer as a student, and we can’t wait to see her again.
In addition to honoring an individual in Dr. Schalk’s name, LSM has established the Dr. Carl Schalk Endowment Fund to support students like Naomi who continue Dr. Schalk’s legacy, and in the promise that the future of music and the Church which he served so faithfully will be preserved through the training and nurturing of young people.
Click below to learn more and support the Dr. Carl Schalk Endowment Fund
