Survivors of Tragedy Turn Music Into a ‘Vessel’ of Faith and Healing at Carnegie Hall

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By Amy Ortiz, Church News

Tucked beneath the pews of a local Church meetinghouse in the eastern Philippines, Mitzi Diaz-Chou sought refuge from Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the area on November 8, 2013, killing thousands and displacing many more.

“The glass windows shattered,” Diaz-Chou recalled, describing her experience hiding beneath the pews alongside other children. “It sounded like a bomb, and the wind began howling and whistling violently through the building. Everyone was crying.”

Diaz-Chou and her family were among the more than 10,000 Latter-day Saints and 4,000 others who sought shelter in some 200 Church meetinghouses across the region. When the storm passed, everything they knew was gone, Diaz-Chou explained. “Streets were filled with wreckage. … Homes were completely swallowed by the sea," she said, adding, “Everything felt still, broken and unfamiliar.”

Even amid such devastation, Diaz-Chou recognized a “deep sense of unity among survivors,” she said. “That experience taught me the fragility of life, the power of faith and the resilience of the human spirit.”

Now a student at Brigham Young University–Hawaii and a member of the university’s Hoʻolōkahi Chamber Choir, Diaz-Chou discovered a similar sense of unity, performing alongside her fellow choir members at New York City’s Carnegie Hall on May 11.

Their performance premiered a 25-minute piece titled “Worldwide Requiem,” which was composed by Erica Glenn, BYU–Hawaii assistant professor and director of the university’s chamber choir, alongside her students. Through its seven movements, the performed requiem honored regions of the world that have recently experienced tragedy or disaster, including the Philippines, Eastern Europe, Tonga, the Middle East, Japan and Hawaii.

Like Diaz-Chou, several other choir members endured some of the tragedies featured in the piece. They performed, sharing their stories as survivors through song.

Said Diaz-Chou: “Preparing and performing the [requiem] felt like finally giving voice to something I had kept in my heart for a long time. It wasn’t just about singing notes on a page, it was about honoring the memory of those we lost and offering hope to others who carry pain that words can’t always express.”

A ‘Voice to the World’

In an interview with the Church News, Glenn — the choir’s director and composer of the piece — explained that inspiration to compose the requiem was fueled by her admiration for her students’ resilience. She said their interactions through the years have taught her about their diverse cultures, languages and musical traditions as well as the tragedies they have overcome.

“I wrote this requiem both to honor them and their lived experiences,” she said, “and to bring awareness to the rest of the world of some of the things that these students have lived through directly and overcome.”

Glenn continued by detailing the piece’s composition and the instrumental role her students played in the creation of it.

She said several of her students provided eyewitness accounts of the tragedies they had experienced and helped translate the requiem’s original Latin text into their native languages.

Diaz-Chou was one such student. Knowing Waray — the Austronesian language specific to the area Typhoon Haiyan struck the hardest — Diaz-Chou aided in translating the piece’s movement, “Pie Jesu,” which honored victims of the typhoon.

Additionally, she provided Glenn a four-page account of her experience, which the two of them turned into a poem and set to music for a vocal soloist to perform in English during the same movement.

“I was able to offer a piece of my story and my people’s voice to the world,” Diaz-Chou said. “The experience just really relives within me when I hear those words that the soloist sings.”

Diaz-Chou added that contributing her eyewitness account to the requiem helped her share a story she once kept hidden. “It helped me realize that my experience, painful as it was, could be part of a greater message of peace and solidarity.”

Through the help of students such as Diaz-Chou, the choir was able to sing in a total of eight languages. Six of them were tied to the regions of the world the piece represented, and an additional two — English and Latin — were interspersed throughout the piece to help listeners understand each region’s story and retain references to the original text.

A ‘Light of Faith and Hope’

Describing the performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Glenn said it was a collaborative effort that required “many little pieces” to come together.

She explained that in order for the choir to sing with a full orchestra, they would need to grow their group of singers from 54 members to at least 100. Thus, they invited others to join and received the support of choirs and individuals from states such as Utah and Arizona. These additional singers prepared individually until the choir met as a whole to practice in New York City alongside professional soloists and the New England Symphonic Ensemble.

“We were definitely an assortment,” Glenn said, noting that the group of performers had only eight hours to practice collectively in the span of two days.

However, she explained that the group quickly transformed from an assortment of performers into an “ohana,” or family, the moment they felt students’ spirits and heard their stories.

“There were tears in the room every time, and it absolutely transformed the way the choir performed these [movements],” Glenn said. “We felt cohesive and collective, and the Spirit just sort of ran in and around and through everything that we did.”

Glenn said her students’ faith and goodness was evident in the way they carried themselves, and that it impacted those who performed with them, many of whom were not members of the Church of Jesus Christ.

She read the words of one singer who joined the choir and wrote to her afterwards, saying: “I found the many [Latter-day Saint] members and students so gracious and welcoming. I love the way we prayed all together before singing. These students have a light within them that shines, a light of faith and hope for the future.”

Likewise, a long-time cellist in the ensemble wrote to Glenn, saying this may be the “most memorable” performance he’s been a part of since he joined the ensemble in 1992. He said, “When music serves its true purpose as a language to communicate beyond all human barriers and those in attendance leave better people, it’s unforgettable.”

These and many other letters testified to Glenn of the impact her students had, helping her see the way God “scooped up this little group of singers and amplified their voices on a world stage.”

A Part of ‘Something Eternal’

BYU–Hawaii students in the choir shared that performing offered them space to mourn and connect with each other, as well as with those who died as victims of tragedy.

“Participating in this project was incredibly healing for me,” said Diaz-Chou. “I’ll never forget the feeling of standing on that stage, knowing our voices were a part of something much bigger, something eternal.”

“Music became a vessel of faith,” she continued, “a way for me to offer my brokenness and see it transformed into something beautiful and sacred.”

Rean Abancia, a fellow choir member and survivor of Typhoon Haiyan, shared that while enduring the storm alongside his grandmother was painful, he found meaning in representing those who died in the typhoon, especially the youth.

“Performing this piece for me was like a love letter to those who died in the natural disasters,” he said. “I strongly felt their presence. I knew they were cheering for us.”

Abancia said this feeling moved him to sing so his words “could reach heaven.” He hoped the choir’s performance would help those who died know they are not forgotten. “They are in our hearts and we will continue to pray for them.”

Similarly recognizing the presence of the choir’s “kūpuna” or ancestors, choir member Hiwa Walker said performing was “deeply emotional.”

A native Hawaiian, Walker danced hula in the requiem’s final movement, honoring victims of the fires that raged through Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii, in 2023. During this movement, Walker also placed handmade leis at the foot of the stage to represent regions noted in the performance.

“Here I was, dancing to symbolize unity across nations,” she said, “representing a kind of Zion, where people from different corners of the world gather to sing and grieve together. The veil was thin.”

Reflecting on the message and impact of their performance, Walker and Abancia said they hope their performance opened people’s eyes beyond their own lives.

“It’s easy to get caught up in our own world and forget the bigger picture,” Walker said. “But there’s so much happening in the lives of others.”

Likewise, Diaz-Chou acknowledged many people carry stories of struggle and loss. She expressed hope that attendees felt “comforted, seen and inspired.”

“Pain is universal, but so is compassion,” she said. “Whether or not they shared the same story, I hope they heard the message that there is healing after sorrow, light after darkness and unity in diversity.”

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