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Facing groups more than twice its size, the Hickory Tree Chorus gained a victory just by performing in the International Chorus Competition in Las Vegas.

“Did we beat the ones that were huge?” asks Carolyn Schmidt ’74. “Noooo. Did we sing really well? Yes.”

The competition was held in a 10,000-seat arena and Schmidt, director and musical arranger for the Hickory Tree Chorus, says her 70-member ensemble won over the crowd.

“This is more than just singing,” she says. “We’re singing, dancing, and we’ve memorized the music. It’s much more like performing in a musical.”

The chorus, based in North Jersey where Schmidt lives, sings in four-part harmony, the same style as a barbershop quartet.

“I sing in one of those as well,” she says. “There are some aspects that make the four-part harmony easier in just the quartet form; there aren’t as many people to coordinate.

“But when it’s only four people, you can run out of air on a single note. With a chorus and so many people in each range, you can fill out the sound.”

The oldest member of Hickory Tree is Schmidt’s 80-year-old mother. Schmidt enjoys the chorus because it’s a group of women coming together for a common goal.

As a member of the first co-ed class at Lafayette, Schmidt joined the Meister Singers. She says she may have been the first woman president of the group as a senior.

The math graduate went on to work at Bell Laboratories as a computer speech researcher. She left to raise her daughters. When they grew up and left home, Schmidt took on Hickory Tree full-time.

“I see myself as more of a performer than a math computer person,” she says.

Categorized in: Alumni Profiles