(upbeat music) - You consider this, music is just such a wonderful, uplifting everything, and these two ladies know how to get it into our heads and get it into our hearts and do all kinds of performances.

Mary Ann Fahey-Darling and Mary Jo Papich are here with me.

And you're with the, this time, you're with the St. Anthony Camerata Chorale.

- Correct.

- Okay.

So you founded it in 2015.

It's not that old.

- This particular choir is not that old, no.

- Okay.

I've been doing choirs for quite a while.

- Yes, you have.

- But- - Where all have you done your choirs?

- Actually, and truthfully, I started with my first choir.

I was 24 years old.

I was at St. Bernard's, and my first job as a music director.

And so that was like many, many years ago.

- And you've gone to several different parishes in between?

- I have.

I taught at St. Philomena.

I've worked at Sacred Heart.

I've been at St. Mary's Cathedral.

I've been all, St. Anthony's now, which I'm dearly loving.

- All right, and Mary Jo has been a good friend of yours on this journey because you guys are lovers of all types of music.

- We are, indeed, and we got together because back in the day, I started my children at the beautiful magnet school, Roosevelt Magnet School.

Took four of my seven down there, and Mary Jo was doing the music, and my children were privileged to get to- - Oh, you're kind.

- be with this- - You're kind.

- Talented woman.

- And Woodruff.

- And Woodruff, yes.

- And Woodruff.

- Then they went to, a couple of mine went to Woodruff after that.

- Okay, then, so this friendship blossomed, and then the two of you 10 years ago came up with this idea at St. Anthony's, so- - [Mary Jo] Actually, no.

- No?

Okay.

= She had this going, remember I was up north, - Oh, up north 10 years ago.

- North of Chicago finishing my teaching career, retiring, moved back, and I see Mary Ann at a Heights band concert, which I conduct sometimes.

And she said, "Well, you've gotta come sing in my choir."

And so I went, she said, "I'll let you direct sometimes."

And I was like- - Now she's my co-director.

- That was an invitation that I got to sing and get to do some conducting, which I dearly love.

And so that brought us together about eight years ago.

- Okay, so that's- - Once again.

- So you moved back about eight years ago then.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Well, it's a good thing that you went to that, to see that.

- Seriously, I mean, renewing an old friendship, number one, but number two, this is the most talented woman.

We call her the Queen of Jazz here.

And every piece of music that's a little bit challenging to me, I give to this woman.

- Okay, that's when she has her turn.

- Oh, amen.

- Okay.

- She is just so- - She's being kind.

- No, I'm not.

I'm being honest.

- I love those, you know, fun rhythms, you know, and working with- - She challenges our choir.

She makes everybody perform to their utmost ability, and- - So how many members are there in the choir?

- Between 24 and 30, at any given time.

Sometimes we even have a couple more, depending, we invite extra people from the community to join us.

And so- - And soloists.

- And soloists, and- - So you sing all different types, that you perform all different types of music.

- All genre of music, but for the most part, we're a sacred music choir, though- - And I'm just gonna say ecumenical.

- All right, okay, good.

- Totally ecumenical.

Not just all Catholics, it's ecumenical.

- Right.

- And- - I founded this one because I really, Pope Francis, I'm very fond of.

- [Mary Jo] Me too.

- We had an opportunity to go sing and- - [Christine] Perform for him.

- Yes, we did.

- [Christine] I believe that there's some pictures somewhere, too.

- There are many a pictures.

(laughs) We just, we enjoyed it so very much.

We got to do a papal Mass and do a concert in Rome.

And that particular one, we did Assisi and Rome.

And this one, we're doing a pilgrimage coming up in June of this year, and we're starting out in Venice this time, in Padua and Siena and Assisi and Florence and Roma.

- Roma.

- Back to Roma.

- And you'll perform in each of those communities?

- Yes, we'll be, every day, and I call it performance, but it's not particularly performance, but we'll be doing a special Mass every day in each place where all the people of the area that are there visiting are part of our congregation audience, and we'll be singing for all of those.

- Yes.

- For those Masses.

- [Christine] Wow.

- And we have a, we do have a papal audience, which I'm just like, "What?

How did this happen?"

- And here you go, right.

Were you invited, or how did it come about?

Who organized this whole, and it's the Jubilee Year.

- Yes.

- It is the Jubilee Year.

And that's particularly why I did it.

I organize tours a lot.

Okay, you did that- - I started- - You bake, you used to cook, you had restaurants, okay.

I'm not sure what you haven't done.

Maybe you haven't ridden a bull, maybe, I don't know.

- It's true, it's true.

We have a concert, then we have a party with great food, you know?

It's great.

- You guys are embarrassing me, but you know, I've enjoyed every part of life.

I'm the eldest daughter of 16 kids.

I have 11 brothers and four sisters.

- A good Catholic family.

All right.

- Yes.

- Really good.

- And I learned very young to be there and be there for people.

And quite honestly, I was sent to Rome the first time by a fluke type of thing.

Someone else couldn't go.

Father Pat Collins couldn't go, so Bishop O'Rourke sent me to a big international meeting of music directors, and this was in 1989.

And we sat in the Sala Augustana, and we had headphones on, so you could, everybody understand each other from all over the world.

I mean, there were, everybody was represented.

There were a couple hundred people there.

And the gist I got was that the Catholics in America did not do good music.

- Interesting.

- And it just irritated the heck out of me.

(Christine laughs) You can't imagine that, can you?

And so I decided that I needed to come home and show them.

So that was my first tour then, in 1990.

I formed a choir in '89, called Afeda, and we had- - I remember that.

- We had 80 voices.

- I remember your performances at the cathedral.

- We did, and we did a lot of wonderful things, years and years of beautiful music.

But we did go back and show them.

And we got to sing for St. John Paul II.

- Ah.

- I have to jump in here and tell you that this woman, who has over 50 years of liturgical sacred music in the Peoria diocese, which is probably unmatched, and when we went to our Holy Lands pilgrimage, we were with other choir directors from all over the country, and she definitely held the record there.

But she is an expert in ecclesiastical Latin, so she wants us to pronounce everything not the way we sang growing up but with proper usage of Latin that they use in Rome.

- Well, Bishop O'Rourke sent me another year in this journey to study Latin in Rome.

- [Christine] Oh, boy.

- At the Pontifical Institute of Musica Sacra.

- Okay!

- And so I was able to go study chant there, and very privileged.

- Very privileged, and to learn it the right way.

- Exactly.

- And then to be able to share that and teach it.

- Right.

- Wow.

Wow.

So you're going on this journey in June, and you have something coming up before that though, to share with people.

- Yes.

It's an actual pilgrimage.

We will have Mass every day.

We will sing at Mass every day.

And it's a journey of hope.

So Mary Ann has assembled a concert entitled "The Journey of Hope," so- - [Christine] I like it.

Those coming and in attendance will hopefully be inspired and motivated and for whatever reason, whatever problems they're facing in their life, they'll walk away renewed and see that we are all pilgrims on the journey.

And so that concert is Sunday, June 8th, 3:00 PM at St. Mark's Church.

- Okay, all right, wow.

And so when you do this traveling and this pilgrimage, you reach out to people and say, "Hey, join us."

And anybody can come along?

I mean, you want, obviously your- - Some singers, good singers.

- You want the voices.

Yeah, you need the voices and you need the significant others, you know, help carry the luggage and stuff.

But so how do they get involved in it?

- This really is not a choir tour per se.

I do just choir tours where we do big concerts and everything in Rome and all over Europe we've been.

But this one particularly is a pilgrimage.

And because it's the Jubilee Year, we get to experience a whole different spiritual dimension.

- You do, with a lot of people.

- With a lot of people, and actually, we have someone from South Dakota joining us.

We have people from all over the state of Illinois joining us, a couple people, one the state of Washington, one from Iowa.

I mean, yeah, we have 55 people traveling.

But right before that, in that "Concert of Hope" that we do, our main mission of our choir is to sing for the honor and glory of God, no matter what genre of music that we're singing.

But the secondary, and actually first, because that's how we give honor and glory to God, is to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

So we have two favorite- - Charities.

- charities that we give to, and we don't charge anyone to come to our concert.

We ask them to bring non-perishable food items and toiletry items and paper goods and fill up our baskets full for Sophia's Kitchen.

And then we have another group that we sponsor and give monies to on a regular basis.

It's called Love Repeated, founded by one of our choir members, Nancy Davis from Lincoln, Illinois, and it's to our sister diocese in Tanzania.

- Oh!

- And we've given thousands and thousands of dollars to both places through our free will offerings.

We take a free will offering, and it's divided between the two, Sophia's Kitchen and- - So you're thinking when you leave this world, you're going up to heaven warm.

- I'm gonna just get there by my shirttail.

I'm just- - You're gonna sing all the way up.

- I have a few people up there already that are kind of pull me up.

(laughs) I don't know, I'm just, no, we just, we're just honored to get to do this.

- So as a co-director, do you also work together to decide what songs you will be performing in any one concert?

- Well, yes and no.

Let me say this.

- All right, this is fair.

- My main area of emphasis in music, as most people know, it's instrumental, but I was a voice minor.

I've sung all the way through, like you have, in the church.

And I grew up in a singing family and- - Oh, for sure.

- So there is no doubt she is the head of it.

- All right.

- And she doesn't wanna call me assistant, but truly that's what I am.

- [Christine] You are cold, woman.

(Mary Jo laughs) - No.

- And I help her, and I look forward to conducting my pieces.

And last night we had a rehearsal, and we shared the rehearsal, and so hopefully helping her out a little bit and just being someone different in front of the choir, where she goes for the pronunciations, and I'm working on those rhythms and feel and interpret, you know.

- And she's so dynamic, and we just love it.

I mean, it just inspires all of us, so I don't know- - And and she is, 'cause she really gets into it.

Her whole body is- - [Mary Ann] She does.

(laughs) It's wonderful.

- You jive.

You definitely jive.

- [Mary Ann] She's got that.

- And you know what?

And if you have- - [Mary Ann] Some people are blessed that way.

- Right.

- This woman is.

And when she talked about her singing musical family, she and her sisters, I mean, they sing beautifully even yet today.

- So what's a little something you could sing right now?

Just a couple of bars of something.

- Oh, no.

- It's too early in the morning.

- That's okay, it's early.

- Do you hear this frog in my throat?

I would never sing- - You even have the lemon water today.

- No way, my darling girl, but thank you for the- - But, but I did, hopefully there'll be, the producers will be putting a little- - There, see?

- of our choir in the, as we go into this interview and out and hear a little bit of our work, of our concerts.

- All right, so you do rehearse weekly?

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- All right.

All the way through?

- Sometimes twice a week.

- Okay, well, it depends on when- - When, yeah.

- What the upcoming performance is, yeah.

- You know, Easter's coming up now, and- - I bet you're, so you're practicing some of that as well as- - [Mary Ann] Exactly.

- 'Cause some of the people are both, so that means, yeah.

- Okay.

And you have these 50 people from near and far.

You said Lincoln is one, - But they're on the pilgrimage.

They won't be singing in the choir.

- Oh, okay, but- - The choir's a smaller version.

- But we do have people that travel every week since 2015.

- Yes.

- From Lincoln, Illinois, to come and sing in this choir every week on Wednesday nights.

- And how did they hear about it and get this dedication?

- I put a big thing out in- - In the church bulletin?

- The "Catholic Post" and in the "Journal Star," and I was on "Dan and Greg," and I mean, you know, we just, we got it out there.

Back in the day, I was on with John Williams, believe it or not.

- Oh, I remember.

- That was a long time ago.

- Well, yeah, he was here a long time ago.

- He was, he was.

- He's doing okay up north.

- The only reason, the only way that they would let me come on is if I bring food.

(laughs) - [Christine] Well, you know what?

- You know those boys.

They were like that.

- I do, I do.

Yeah, everybody's that way in a way.

So what's been, through this journey and all of the other journeys, last year, you went to Ireland, Scotland, and England.

- [Mary Ann] So much fun.

- And you did perform there or?

- We did.

We did.

- Okay.

- How many performances?

Every day at Mass or?

- No, we did actually two, three Masses and one performance, and we performed in Dublin.

- [Mary Jo] That was more of a fun tour.

- Okay.

- It wasn't as focused and intense.

We didn't have a priest with us.

We didn't have Masses.

- Okay, so this definitely is a pilgrimage.

- It was just fun.

But this one coming up, yes, it is.

- But some of the highlights that we did, I mean, that Mass at Our Lady of Knock was just like, it was stupendous.

- It was, - And we just, I mean, we heard the recording.

They recorded us live and put it all over Ireland.

And I'm going, "Holy Pete, is that us?"

- Well, and Christine- - "We sound good."

- "Do we sound that," I mean.

- Christine, I didn't know about Our Lady of Knock before.

Did you?

I mean- - Only when I went to Ireland I found out, yeah.

- Okay, because there were people there coming to Mass to be healed.

And we got to sing for them and inspire them, and it was just a huge place with a fabulous sound system and just beautiful, just beautiful.

And we also went up into the Hebrides, way up north where there was a little mission church, and we pulled in, and we were actually on the way to the church for our Mass performance when there was a wreck.

Well, this is not four-lane Chicago, and so we of course sit- - There's two lanes.

- in traffic.

- It was quite crazy.

- As I'm watching people get off and go to the bathroom and stretch and you know, and we just sit until, and it's like, "We're gonna be late.

We are gonna be late."

And so Mary Ann called ahead to the priest who was there from South Africa, I believe, and he said, "Our church is full.

It has not been full in a long time.

We will wait.

We will wait for you."

So after it opened up, we start warming up and get there and go right in it too.

- And we're in Scotland.

- Memories, you know?

- We're in Scotland, and we were told all about the midges, right?

- Yes, yes.

- Remember?

And we never had experienced anything like that in our lives.

We went from, got off the bus, they attacked us immediately, and we- - Like little gnats, you know?

- Shot into that.

- And just like, I mean- - Oh, my word.

(laughs) - Of course, we had prepared and bought things, and of course they weren't on us, you know, I mean- - Of course they were, because we didn't think, we were right there.

I mean, we're going to church.

- But so many memories, and Scotland was just amazing.

I'd been to Ireland before and, but Scotland was just so amazing with the- - [Mary Ann] We have to go back there soon.

- Castles and all this we did.

But tell Christine a little bit about the tour company that does these special pilgrimages and choir tours.

- Peter's Way Tours.

This Peter's Way Tours, we are full right now for this tour, though we have a waiting list, and you know, anybody can be on the waiting list.

But this touring company I've been traveling with since 1990 and- - [Christine] Since your first trip to Italy.

- My first trip to Italy, and I only went one time with another group that I was not in charge of the choir.

I was in charge of the choir, but not the tour itself.

And I quickly, I would never go with anyone but this group.

Peter Bahou, he's a Palestinian that was raised in Israel.

- Okay.

- And lovely, lovely man.

- [Christine] I bet he knows his way around.

- He knows his way around, inside and out.

- Definitely, definitely.

I've toured, you know, as you know, with kids all over the world.

- For the Jazz Education Network, yes.

- and the Peoria Jazz All Stars and Woodruff.

I took them a lot, and I have to say, and I've even freelanced for travel groups and took them, and yeah, it's reputable.

You can be assured of a- - First-class.

- wonderful experience.

- [Mary Ann] Absolutely first-class.

- That's good to know.

- Absolutely.

- All right, so what is, I mean, you're so involved, and music is your life.

So what's been the most fulfilling, and what do you look forward to after this trip?

- The most fulfilling thing in my life?

- Well, you know.

- Musically.

- Yeah, musically regarding what all you're doing.

- Not your kids.

- Okay, no, but I would have to say to you, Mary Jo, that the most fulfilling thing is watching my children who have been benefited by not only you with the music, but, well, especially those that were able to go to Roosevelt in the magnet school.

- [Mary Jo] Wonderful experiences, wonderful.

- To see the wonderful things that they do with their music, and that's the most fulfilling.

- So all of them, all seven of them are musical still to this day?

- Well, four of them are very musical, yeah.

- All right.

- Of the seven.

- And how about the grandkids then?

Did they pick up a little?

- You know, there are some that are doing that.

One's an actress, and I mean, yeah, we're just, it's a family filled with the arts, and doctors.

(laughs) - So when you get together at home, okay, when you get together at home, I mean, you have the piano, and so do you all stand there, you do the guitar?

- Yeah, I actually, I was not a pianist.

I was a guitarist, and- - [Christine] And you still are, because you showed me your calluses.

- And yeah, they're there forever and ever, amen.

But no, and they play, most of them play the stringed instruments, but all their children play, and it's wonderful.

- And then Mary Jo, so you are, well, you have a keyboard at home.

- Sure.

- Right?

And you play that.

- I'm not a great piano player, but sure.

When you're a music teacher, you've gotta be able to play some piano.

- [Christine] Exactly.

- Fulfilling, Christine, honestly, I have such a great time in front of an ensemble that every time I stand in front of an ensemble and get to shape and mold music, as she knows, I don't love teaching parts.

I mean, let's get that done, folks, so we can really make music, that it's an aha moment every time for me.

But I think my last spiritually fulfilling moment musically was on the Holy Lands pilgrimage, which I had never even, it wasn't on my bucket list, I didn't have, but I was turning, I had a birthday that year and it was two years ago, and it was a big one- - And I said I couldn't go without her.

- And so she said, "There's an opening, you need to go."

And I went, "Okay."

- No pressure, yeah.

- Absolutely.

- I went, "Okay."

So I went and thinking, "Oh, boy, can I do this?"

You know, "This is pretty holy stuff, and I'm a real-world person."

And I found out that it was just a beautiful experience, having Mass every day.

And I wanna mention Father Charles Klamut at St. Anthony's because he- - [Christine] He's leading this pilgrimage.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- And he is a composer- - I didn't know that.

- that is writing things all the time.

- Really?

- No, seriously.

- And we've gotten to premiere them.

- Fantastic things.

- Last night, I was working with a choir on this latest psalm, and he's writing music to the psalm.

So it's prayerful and so unusual.

Everyone's different.

But back to my spiritually fulfilling moment was on this trip, and we went to the top of Mount Tabor, where the Beatitudes were- - Okay, yes, I remember.

- were first spoken, and think of the song we were singing in there, but spiritually, you know, we all try to live- - "Blest Are They."

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- "Blest are they, poor in spirit."

- Exactly.

- "Blest Are They," and as we sang, and the acoustics was just wonderful, and spiritually, I just, that's the motto.

If our world all lived by doing for others and being kind every day- - Amen to that.

- Even one person at a time- - The world would be so much better.

- Amen to that.

- Makes a difference in the world.

- It really does.

- And it was just so- - Totally.

- So moving and so fulfilling, and there were quite honestly many moments like that on that tour.

- There were, for sure, yeah.

- Amen to that.

- There were.

- So Micah, did you just tell me one minute?

Are we done?

We're done already.

We're done already!

Blessed are you for being here, and thank you so much, inspiration.

And blessed are you for joining us.

Until next time, be well.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)