When Skule Choir invited me to attend their rehearsal, I decided it was a good enough reason to brave an engineering building for the first time. After taking a few wrong turns, I found myself in a sweltering and kind of damp ‘music room’ in the basement of Myhal. I took a seat at the back of the room and watched assistant conductor Lauren Levorson-Wong wave her arms around — both while conducting, and while passionately urging the choir to “lock in.”
The rehearsal was lighthearted and collaborative. Multiple conductors rotated in and out, and the choir often discussed the music as a group, while sharing nerdy jokes. Even though I was playing the part of a Very Serious Journalist, and quite possibly sweating through my t-shirt, I have to admit, I enjoyed sitting in.
After the rehearsal, I spoke with some lovely members of the Skule Choir about the group’s history, their goals, and their 10th anniversary concert. I learned a lot, including what ‘Skule’ means: it denotes U of T’s engineering society-affiliated clubs. The name comes from the word “school,” and emerged from a joke that engineers can’t spell. This was one of several inside jokes that were graciously explained to me that night.
Building relationships
Levorson-Wong explained in her interview that Skule Choir is one of several Skule music groups that had previously existed in the 1980s, but became defunct. In 2015, a group of engineering students who wanted “a choir that wasn’t exclusively sacred music or exclusively a capella glee music, something that reflected their high school choir experience more accurately,” re-established the ensemble with Levorson-Wong as the conductor.
Over the past 10 years of leadership and collaboration, Levorson-Wong said, “Our goal has been to try and make good music education accessible to as many people as possible, allowing engineers and other university students that aren’t part of the music faculty… the opportunity to participate in that kind of choral singing tradition.”
The choir also gives Faculty of Music students leadership opportunities. Levorson-Wong was the conductor of Skule Choir from 2016 until last year, and has now passed on the position to Amanda Yu, a fourth-year music education student, because “inheritance is a wonderful thing, and retiring is also lovely.”
One of Skule Choir’s aims is to build relationships outside of the Faculty of Engineering. Levorson-Wong graduated from the Faculty of Music in 2024, which, like engineering, is also a professional faculty. She said that as a music student, she had felt limited to her faculty. Skule offers a variety of opportunities for non-engineering and engineering students to “explore what being a human is.”
What I appreciated about speaking with Levorson-Wong was their passion for sharing the joy of music — as opposed to focusing on the musical outcome itself — and the collaborative approach they brought to the role of conductor. In an environment where the aim is to experience music together, joy is what is most important.
Alexia Piunno, a mechanical engineering student and marketing & communications manager for Skule Choir, recalled their experience as a new member of the choir.
“I played the piano for a little bit when I was a kid, so I knew how to read sheet music,” Piunno said. “I don’t know how to look at it and be like, ‘These are notes, and that’s what they sound like.’ ” Despite feeling unfamiliar with choral singing, Piunno recalls that they felt “surprisingly comfortable,” even at the choir’s first rehearsal.
Speaking on accessibility in music education, Levorson-Wong said, “as someone with a disability who’s in music education, having accessible points in choral settings and in group music settings has always been really important.”
Her priority with Skule Choir is to “let anybody, regardless of their background — whether they’ve sung before, whether they’ve been in a choir before, whether they can read sheet music,” take part. Her aim is “learning and community building over having a specific kind of tone quality at the end of the day.”
10th anniversary
Skule Choir’s winter concert, Through the Years, took place on March 28 and celebrated the choir’s 10th anniversary since its reemergence. The concert featured songs the choir has sung in each year of the past decade, and invited alumni to join in on the songs that they knew.
Alex Wang, a former Skule Choir marketing executive, felt personally invested in keeping the choir going. Wang flew in from Vancouver to sing in this concert. Celebrating 10 years of the choir is meaningful to them “because there have been trials and tribulations trying to keep this whole thing afloat.”
“What’s unique about Skule Choir, as someone who’s been in other choirs before, is that the environment is really nice,” Wang continued. “We’re very open to people who are new to music. I’ve been in ensembles where it’s kind of serious, and there’s less ability to be open or welcoming. But Skule Choir just feels like a nice community to be in.”
Skule Choir is open to all members of the community — not only engineering students. You can learn more about getting involved on their website or @skulechoir on Instagram.
