Knutson voices unite at last

Normally, the youngest sibling gets stuck with a lot of hand-me-downs.

But in this case, what Laura Knutson was handed down from her two older siblings was an outstanding singing voice.

Following in the footsteps of older brother Matthew and older sister Rachel, Laura Knutson performed recently with the Minnesota All-State Lutheran Choir just as they were in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Matthew will be a senior and Rachel a junior, both at the University of North Dakota, this fall.

The three Knutson siblings were reunited Thursday night when one of the stops on the current All-State Lutheran Choir’s tour was at Hope Lutheran Church in Minneota. Scott and Barb Knutson’s three children sang while standing next to one another in the All-State Lutheran Alumni choir.

“We’ve probably never sang side by side like that ever before,” said Laura.

“It was pretty cool. We’ve all sang in the Jubilation Choir at church before, but we all sing different voice types so we don’t stand together. So, yeah, this was pretty special.”

The alumni group, including the Knutson siblings, performed, “The Lord Bless You and Keep You.”

“My brother and sister recommended that I audition (for the All-State Lutheran Choir) because they said it was such a neat experience that you can’t get anywhere else.” Her other family members, as well as some of the members of Hope Lutheran Church; many who are among the 1,700 All-State Lutheran Choir alumni, also urged Knutson to audition.

The All-State Lutheran Choir was founded in 1969. Hope Lutheran Church helped Knutson fund the trip. She also applied and received some funding through the All-State Lutheran Choir’s scholarship program.

“They do auditioning a little different than they used to,” she explained. “You used to have to go to a place and audition (Rachel auditioned at Lake Carlos near Alexandria two years ago).” “Now you just send them a tape of yourself signing.”

So Laura had a video made of her singing the Star Spangled Banner, as well as her range from lowest note to highest note as required. “I got an email about a week later telling me I had made it,” said Knutson, who was a member of her school choir for eight years and has been with the Jubilation Choir at church for three years.

The All-State Lutheran Choir this year included 49 members. Members of the choir must at least be entering their sophomore year of high school this fall and can be a recent graduate about to enter college in the fall.

Twenty of the 49 members graduated from high school in 2018.

The choir practiced for seven hours a day for a week at Concordia College in Moorhead beginning June 10. “The directors would give us vitamins and told us to stay away from any dairy products to preserve our voice,” Knutson noted.

“We always had cough drops on hand and were supposed to drink a lot of water.” “On bus trips for our tour, we would have quiet time where we couldn’t talk at all so we could rest our voices.”

The director this year was Dr. Michael Culloton, an associate professor of music at Concordia College. Rene Clausen, a world-renowned composer and conductor was a guest clinician.

Andrew Steinberg was the accompanist. In the past, the All-State Lutheran choir toured for two weeks, but it has since been reduced to seven days.

Besides Minneota, they performed in Moorhead, Wadena, Battle Lake, Spicer, Princeton, Stewartville and Columbia Heights.

During their trips, host families would take in two to four members of the group and feed them and give them a place to sleep.

“On the trip to Spicer, one of the host families had a huge house on Green Lake and they took in 16 of us,” Knutson recalled.

“That was so much fun. We stayed up all night and talked and got to know one another really well.” Knutson said she bonded well with several of the other choir members.

“It was an eye-opening experience because I’ll be going to college and this sort of prepares you for that,” said Knutson, who will be attending the University of South Dakota in Vermillion next fall and study Health Services Administration.

“There weren’t any other Minneota people there to hang out with. So you meet new people and gain a lot of new relationships. I am still in contact with a lot of them.”