When Guanghao Yu stands at the front of the modest interior of Brookline’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the choir turns its attention to his voice and his hands. The 24-year-old assistant conductor and social media manager of Longwood Chorus leads the singers in vocal warmups — rounds of breathing exercises and “neeeeaaaaas.”
The chorus’s assistant music director, 28-year-old Iris Chan, moves her fingers across the keys of an electronic keyboard, pushing the choir higher in the scale note by note. The singers massage their jaws and stretch their spines before spending the next two hours in song.
This rehearsal took place on an evening in early November as the choir prepared for its “Ceremony of Carols” concert at All Saints Parish on Dec. 9. The singers are health care professionals as well as members of Longwood Chorus, whose mission is to reduce medical burnout and foster emotional well-being through choral music. Some of the members are doctors, others are researchers, and many are medical students just starting out in the field.
Chan is a student at Tufts University School of Medicine, and Yu is a student in Boston University’s master’s in medical sciences program. Previously, he was a clinical research coordinator in Boston Medical Center’s nephrology department. When asked what he hopes to do in the medical field, Yu’s answer was somewhat similar to what he already does with Longwood Chorus.
“Something where I can use my hands,” said Yu, noting that he hopes to do “something procedural,” which, like conducting, requires control and attention to detail. In the group’s upcoming performance of Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28,″ Robert Applebaum’s “O Chanukah,” Anna Lapwood’s “O Nata Lux,” and more, Yu will be conducting Ola Gjeilo’s “Northern Lights,” 25-year-old alto singer Vineetha Mathew’s favorite piece in the set list.
The Northern Lights are a phenomenon that “you can’t really describe in words, but you can describe it in music: You get that majestic, beautiful sense from that piece,” said Mathew, a medical student at Tufts University researching women’s cardiovascular health at the Broad Institute.
Gjeilo’s composition is inspired by its namesake: the green and purple ribbons of light that make up the aurora borealis. Like the natural phenomenon, the song is atmospheric — the kind of choral arrangement that reverberates through the church’s exposed wooden beams and can be felt all around the warmly lit space.
Mikaela Bartels, the board president of Longwood Chorus, knows the feeling well. “This semester, there are a couple of songs where we hit those chords and my heart sings,” Bartels said. “It feels like my blood is vibrating in my veins because of the sound that we are making together as a group.”
Bartels is a certified child life specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, a position that she said entails procedural support, therapy, developmental stimulation, and a wide range of educational and emotional programming for children. Bartels works in the hospital’s in-patient surgical unit primarily made up of infants and toddlers, so music is often a major part of her practice, she noted.
“But it’s very different when I’m singing a lullaby to a baby to help calm them and soothe them when they’re in pain, versus the chords and the music that we create as a group,” said Bartels.
Jeremy Faust, the music director of Longwood Chorus and an emergency physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, said he’s found many parallels between music and medicine.
“Emergency medicine is a very high-intensity, improvisational activity, as is choral conducting,” said Faust.
“As an ER doctor, I diagnose and treat anything that walks in the door . . . whether that’s a patient having a stroke, COVID, a broken leg, or a new appendicitis that needs to go to the operating room,” he said.
Navigating the voices and dynamics of choral music requires a similar mix of spontaneity and confidence, he said. “The worst thing you can ever do as a performer is to make your audience feel like you’re not in control,” said Faust. “And the same thing is true of medicine. You want to go in there and say, ‘Look, here’s what’s going on,’ and make [the patient] feel that they are safe in your hands.”
Several of the choir members and leaders noted that collaboration is key in both choral music and the medical field.
“Everyone has a different voice, everyone has a different part, but we all have to come together to make this fabric of music that sounds unified,” said Chan, who plans to specialize in pediatrics when she graduates. “It’s very similar in medicine, especially in pediatrics. You’re working with a kid, and they have a parent or guardian or caregiver. Everyone has a different part of the story. It’s your job as the doctor or as the medical student to work with all the members of the team.”
Choral music, like patient care, is made up of moving parts. And every moving part is necessary.
“There’s just a magic that happens when voices come together to create a sound that you will never get from singing on your own,” said Bartels. “There’s a harmony in it.”
CEREMONY OF CAROLS
Dec. 9, 7:30 p.m. All Saints Parish, 1773 Beacon St, Brookline. longwoodchorus.org
Elena Giardina can be reached at elena.giardina@globe.com.