The UTC Chamber Singers are headed to Ireland at the end of the semester, but before the group crosses the Atlantic, they will bring a piece of that journey home.
On March 27, the ensemble will present a local concert previewing the music they will perform overseas.
The “Emerald Isle Concert” will take place at 7 p.m. at Our Lady of the Mount Catholic Church, located at 1227 Scenic Highway in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. The church was selected to mirror the acoustics and sacred spaces where the ensemble will perform in Ireland. The free public concert will include music written by Irish and American composers.
UC Foundation Professor of Music Kevin Ford, who has led numerous global performance tours since joining UTC in 2003—including two prior excursions to Ireland—said international tours consistently draw attention not only to the ensemble but to the University itself.
“We don’t ever go anywhere that we don’t have people coming up to us and asking about UTC,” Ford said. “We make those connections and people like what they see.”
This year’s tour includes 25 student singers, along with alumni and family members traveling with the group. Participants represent a wide range of academic backgrounds, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of UTC’s music ensembles.
Ford and members of the Chamber Singers will participate in UTC’s commencement ceremonies on May 8 and 9 before leaving for Dublin on May 10.
The Ireland itinerary includes three major performance sites across the country.
- In Galway, the Chamber Singers will perform at St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, a medieval church founded in the 12th century.
- In Limerick, the ensemble will present a full evening concert at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, with plans to livestream the performance back to the United States.
- In Dublin, the group will sing at Christ Church Cathedral, the city’s oldest church and a landmark that predates nearby St. Patrick’s Cathedral by roughly half a century.
Ford said those venues are not interchangeable—and that distinction matters for students.
“Some pieces are written for specific spaces,” he said. “What you realize is that it was written for the acoustics of that space.”
That lesson becomes tangible once students experience it firsthand.
“There’s this big, long rest in the middle of one piece, and it just feels like it just goes on forever,” Ford said. “But when you do it in the church, you realize why that rest is there; it takes that long for the echo to die down.
“If you’re singing and the church is echoing, all of a sudden it sounds like a 60-voice choir because all of the sound is still in the air.”
For music majors, Ford said, that realization is essential.
“It’s a way of experiencing that music in the environment that it was meant to be experienced in,” he said. “For somebody majoring in music, that’s an important thing to learn.”
Ford said the Ireland excursion weaves musical performance with cultural and historical immersion.
Between concerts, the students will tour historic sites including the Hill of Tara, Trim Castle, the Spanish Arch in Galway, the Poulnabrone Dolmen tomb in the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, Bunratty Castle and Glendalough.
For many students, the Ireland tour will be their first opportunity to perform internationally. For others, it is a return trip with a new perspective.
Abbie Dallmann, a sophomore music therapy major from Knoxville, Tennessee, said joining the Chamber Singers was one of her goals when she arrived at UTC.
UT Knoxville did not offer a music therapy program, she said, and coming to Chattanooga allowed her to pursue the major she wanted while continuing to sing.
“I love it here. It’s been wonderful,” Dallmann said.
She grew up hearing stories from her mother, who earned an undergraduate degree in music and toured as part of her own chamber choir. Dallmann said she hoped college would give her a similar opportunity.
“That was the goal coming to college: to get into a touring choir that’s going to go across the world. I wanted to see things while also sharing music and singing in incredible places,” she said.
When Ireland became the destination, she was ready for her first trip outside the United States.
More than the passport stamp, she said, the experience is about community.
“It’s traveling with a group of people that I really have grown very close to,” Dallmann said. “We’re going to get to sing in 14th-century churches—and music has reverberated across those walls forever. I’m so happy to be a part of that history and sing in those spaces.”
Ireland will mark Chattanooga native Bradley Bee’s second international tour with the ensemble, having traveled as a freshman to Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.
Now a senior, Bee—who is majoring in both piano performance and vocal music education—serves as the Chamber Singers’ president.
“Since I’m the president, I’ve gotten to see a lot more of the logistics and planning of getting this tour set up,” he said. “It’s a rare opportunity that we get—to go and see the world and give our gifts to people in other areas.”
When Ireland was chosen as this year’s destination, Bee thought of family history—his father had traveled there in college—and of the younger singers who would be experiencing an international tour for the first time.
“It was nice to be able to feed the flame of that excitement,” Bee said. “It’s really such a great way to bring the group closer.”
Noah Dillon, who is pursuing a master’s degree in computer science with a concentration in cybersecurity, has been part of the Chamber Singers since 2020.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from UTC in May 2024 and will graduate with his master’s degree just days before flying to Ireland.
Though his academic path is rooted in technology, Dillon said choir has long provided a creative outlet.
“Choir was a very good place to be,” he said. “I think everybody who’s doing something you wouldn’t necessarily consider a creative field … having that outlet is a really good place.”
Dillon traveled with the ensemble on its previous European tour and has visited much of the Caribbean. Ireland will be a first.
“I love traveling,” he said. “When I heard Ireland, I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go.’ There was no doubt about it.”
He said he is particularly interested in the architecture of the churches where the group will perform.
“Most are made of stone,” Dillon said. “All of the weather, all of those affect how you sing and how it sounds. I’m really excited to see what it’s like for us to stand there and sing and hear the actual reflections of our voices back off the stone.”
Calling himself an analytical thinker, Dillon said he also views structures differently.
“You can see what people were thinking when they built something,” he said. “It’s literally written in the stone.”
For Ford, those moments when students connect with history are the reason the tours take place.
“It gives you a different perspective when you meet people from other countries,” he said. “You realize just how much you do take for granted when you go into different cultures.
“And it’s a way of experiencing that music in the environment that it was meant to be experienced in.”
To help offset expenses, the UTC Division of Advancement has established a dedicated giving link at give.utc.edu/ireland