04/15/2026
To know Professor Burt Harbison was to know someone who wanted to see the best in everyone. I didn’t know when I auditioned for University Singers how much a choir under his guidance could change my life, but it did. His frequent note checks, where singers would sing their part (Tenor 2) a ca****la and solo with just one voice on each of the other choral voice parts could instill the fear of God 😳, at first. Or even more terrifying, memory checks, where no matter how challenging the text, we often sang in French, German, and Italian, singers were asked to sing without music 😭
But then I soon learned why he expected so much of his choir. Because he loved us and knew the potential we had to sing TOGETHER. And it showed, in all the brilliant a ca****la, memorized chords we filled Crouse College with, among other venues. “Papa H” as he was affectionately known to those who sang under his tutelage, was one of a kind and I will miss him. But the songs he taught us live on, especially since Clément Janequin’s hyperbolic “Frerelelefan” will never leave my memory bank.
