I’ve been holding on to my website for YEARS, paying the fee to keep my .com alive for who knows why. Two rambling musings from back in 2016 are my only posts. Anyone checking out kristinmorris.com would think I was dead. But nope, I’m alive and well, and have simply forgotten about the joy of writing! Hopefully that changes NOW. I’d like to begin with sharing my music journey, for anyone who has only met the person I am now.

I was once busy getting paid to sing other people’s music, with little time for my own. That’s in the past. I’m no longer looking for (or, let’s face it, being offered) gigs. But now I have time for my own creativity and I relish it! I run an independent voice/piano studio out of my (new to me) home. It’s a beautiful space in which to pour in to the next generation of music makers, and now that we’re all settled in, it’s high time I added some students to the schedule. Along with students coming to my home for private lessons, I hope to pour some of my passion into a YouTube channel dedicated to encouraging the creative process of bringing songs to life. Stay tuned!

Memories fade and so many of mine are important only to me, but they help explain my heart and passion for musical excellence, expression, communication in singing – that thing that I used to do so easily but now must work REALLY hard to do (mentally) well enough that it might still come across as easy. These days, that mental work has actually gone from emotionally draining and sometimes depressing, to exciting and helpful to me as a teacher guiding younger singers. My focus has changed, and with that so has my attitude and my outlook. Praise God for that!

So I’ll share a few memories of how it used to be, in order to catch you up on how I ended up where I am now:

I decided at nine years old I’d be a professional singer when I grew up. Barbra Streisand, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Simon and Garfunkel records were my first teachers, an enthusiastic play-by-ear pianist elementary school music teacher, then private piano and sax lessons, Junior choir, an exacting and passionate Jr. high school choir director, band, then high school completely wrapped up in all things music, a father who blasted classical music through the house at all hours he was home–everything from opera to Jazz, Beethoven symphonies and whatever the classical radio station wanted to play. In high school I ran with the broadway music and soft pop geeks and listened to cast albums of every show, went to New York on field trips to see musicals, performed in as many as I could, finally getting leads. Chorally I excelled and all those early years of harmonizing with those records served me well when it came time to audition for state and regional and all-eastern choral festivals. I continued private piano until I was seventeen and my piano teacher then passed me on to an amazing voice teacher who challenged me to learn arias and languages, mature sacred music and art song all while I was making up Billy Joel accompaniments by ear at home so I could sing his songs at the piano. At church I was racking up solo opportunities, singing at weddings, starting to get paid. Outside school I found myself performing lead roles with adults in both opera and summer dinner theater, and toured in a choir of auditioned highschoolers performing in cathedrals all over Europe. And I came home from that and announced I would NOT be attending the state school I’d enrolled in for music ed, but rather, simply HAD to go to the best school in the country and major in performance! My father sighed, and said, “Well, then, I suppose you’ll be traveling 600 miles away then.” The Number ONE school of music in the United States at the time was Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, now known as The Jacobs School of Music. I don’t know how or why they supported my crazy ideal, but they did. They let me take a year off so that I could work and cram in more piano as well as continue voice lessons to prepare for the audition process, and on a cold weekend in January, off I went to audition, mom driving me all the way from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Bloomington, Indiana for one afternoon to sing 3 contrasting arias for a panel of judges, then all the way home to wait for the result. My acceptance letter came the day before my March 21st birthday, and I asked God “Why? Why have You made this so easy for me?!!” And that night I received His answer, and wrote a song, “The Reason I Sing” — more on that later.

Freshman year in Bloomington was incredible. Although my choral auditions first semester netted me nothing but Women’s Chorus, thus putting a much needed check on my out of control ego, I was blessed to perform with a makeshift band of dormies who swept the all-school IU Sing competition with our seven-minute “musical” in all categories, delved into Hungarian women’s 4-part songs, landed a spot in an opera chorus needing extra women and made friends with seniors and grad students as a result, and enjoyed belting out show and pop tunes at the piano with my new friends at Teter Quad. One of those evenings at the piano resulted in an opportunity for me to perform “The Reason I Sing” for a Navigator Rally, which resulted in my becoming a senior audio technology major’s senior project, which resulted in a fully professional multitrack recording of my song which, 5 years later, won a spot on the WXIR Christian Album Project in Indianapolis! Second semester’s new choral auditions got me into BOTH the Singing Hoosiers and the top Chamber Choir! The most wonderful thing that happened to me during that time however, was Jesus. I’ll share that in another post; we’ll stick to the music stuff here, but it was significant enough that it has to come alongside these musical memories. I wrote some more songs. Took on a new love of contemporary Christian music and immersed myself in that genre while soaking up classical music in school. My friend groups dramatically changed.

While the next four years (yes, it took me five) were filled with growth and relationship building in a Christian community of like-minded disciples mostly outside the music school, I found fellowship within as well, as a grad student in orchestral conducting gathered together a band of Christian music majors, and discipled us. We met weekly for bible study, ministered together at a convalescent center, and founded a Christian coffee-house which was open monthly on Saturday evenings and where I rocked out to Keith Green songs, which I still love singing to this day. I became a Madrigal Singer and performed that splendid a cappella Renaissance music in costume multiple nights every year throughout the two weeks of December until I graduated. My Chamber Choir traveled to Atlanta, GA, to sing Messiah with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Shaw, I performed in several more operas, some with lead roles, was asked to participate in the recording of a new musical in which I would sing a role with 3 of the top singers in the school performing the other roles, 2 of whom are now professors of voice at IU. Leonard Bernstein came to IU for a season, auditioned the voice students for roles in his “Mass” to be performed at the Kennedy Center, and I won the role of “Rock Singer”! Alas, he later decided to bag the idea of using IU students for his project. I stayed plenty busy being asked to sing on recitals of new music for composition grad students, pick up choirs for conducting grad students, studio operas for directing grad students. If you can read and you can emote, you stay in hot demand! Chamber Choir was given the privilege of traveling with IU Music School to New York City to perform not only our own concert at the Julliard School but also with the IU Opera as a chorus of villagers in the World English Premiere of “The Greek Passion” at the Metropolitan Opera, AND we provided the choral ensemble for the IU Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fischer Hall, during a 2 week trip of IU in NYC. SO memorable, that trip! I have to say, in retrospect, that although my “performance” diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, the memories are ALL worth it.

Both the Director of Opera Theater, Professor Ross Allen, and the Head of the Choral Department, my Chamber Choir director Robert Porco, sat me down at the end of my 5 years when they inquired about my plans for graduate school, and tried to talk me into staying. They both offered me graduate assistantships. I turned them down. I couldn’t wait to move on with life. It was foolish of me to not take them up on this opportunity, and Jim, my fiance, was far from finished with his undergraduate program. We could have married and stayed. Painfully poor, of course, and already steeped in debt, we just couldn’t see how that could be possible. All things are possible with God, but we couldn’t see it. So I left, went back home to PA for the summer, then moved to Indianapolis to be near Jim and plan our wedding.

As soon as I moved to Indy I started singing in a church choir and doing solos, and auditioned for the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir. Got in, but just couldn’t bring myself to join the group once I found out how far away the rehearsals would be and how much I would have to pay for my own music. We were dirt poor! So I joined another choir, the Indianapolis Arts Chorale, and was in that group for a number of years, with plenty of great solo experiences and friends made. The Album Project previously mentioned gave me opportunities for coffeehouse gigs and some small concerts and various churches, and more friends made, but as one representative from Word Records told me, “sorry Kristin, but you sound like Sandi Patty and Susan Ashton and, well, we already have a Sandi Patty and a Susan Ashton. We don’t need another.” That door was closed, and it was time to start a family. My last musical was “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” I performed the role of Mother, pregnant with my first son. During that time I had gone from working full time for a lumber company to working at a High School as choral assistant/accompanist. I did that job until I was pregnant with son #2, and by then was also working professionally in the recording industry as a studio session vocalist for Aire Born Recording Group, singing on choral demonstration recordings for the next 20+ years as a first-call alto, often called upon to do the solos because of my ability to communicate the text as if I’d known the song for years even though I was sightreading it! I enjoyed the challenge of singing well and our choir of 8 to 12 polishing a song in 45 minutes from first laying eyes on it, with three passes so that we sounded more like 24 or 36 voices. We were, and that group remains, one of the most beautiful sounding demo choirs in America, and the income from those sessions truly helped me eke out a living as a professional while raising my boys. Along with those session gigs, I had moved on to a smaller, more professional choir, a 16 voice ensemble called “Mon Choeur” which was the resident professional choir of University of Indianapolis under Paul Krasnowsky, whom I have to thank for passing me along to the choral contractor for Aire Born Studios. I enjoyed the privilege of singing the alto arias for Handel’s Messiah with the Taylor University Choirs and Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra, and then again with the Bach Chorale Singers of Lafayette, IN. During those years the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra decided to do Messiah as well, and I was able to sing alto in the 16 member chamber choir for those professional performances for a number of years. From that group another wonderful choral experience emerged, the Meridian Vocal Consort. And one of my most wonderful experiences of all was being the soprano lead in a trio of singers with Hosanna Sacred Arts, a ballet/modern dance company who performed mostly original music with live singers interwoven in a glorious work glorifying God during the Christmas season. I sang with HSA for for years, through the birth of two sons.

I continued to write songs, record and perform concerts for churches, retreats, do weddings and funerals, and developed a concert I took to nursing homes as well. I took on the leadership role of directing my church’s children’s music camp musical for a number of years, and continue to direct the children’s choir during Christmas season. I sang for several years with an a cappella quartet company known as the Dickens Carolers, in full 19th century costume during the Christmas season as well. I went to India with a ministry team for 2 and a half weeks, singing for schools and churches throughout south India. That life-changing adventure resulted in a relationship of service and ministry that continues to this day with India Youth For Christ.

And during all these singing adventures, I taught students to sing. I taught one student at a time, in my home, while raising my boys. One student at a time, putting on recitals and master classes from time to time to get them all together, sometimes having only 8 or 9 weekly clients, sometimes up to 24, but always teaching someone. During all these years I was (still am) an adjudicator for Indiana State School Music Association Solo and Ensemble Contests, judging (more like giving voice lessons on paper for) young singers in the Group I Required List category mostly, having learned so many of the songs on that list during my days in college as a voice major and afterward having taught those songs over and over. It has always been and continues to be what I consider my “primary profession.” Even now, although as I type this, I am down to only two voice students and one piano student. Yep, 3 students. Again, it’s a long story for another post!

It’s been a good long while since I thought about all those musical experiences. And a bit of a minute since I got in touch with writing. Hopefully now that I’ve got that “resume” part of me all typed out, I can move on to the musings of life as a musician in the yoke of Christ. But at this point in my life, it’ll be far less about the musician part, and far more about the yoke. See ya back her soon!