[CHOIR SINGING]
PENNA ROSE: Choral music can be a transcendent experience.
Everybody comes bringing a different gift.
Some have great pitch, some have a great personality.
Some have just the ability to sight read specks off a wall.
So you put all of these people together,
and all of those talents make the group
bigger than the individuals are.
My name is Penna Rose.
I'm the director of Chapel Music,
and this is my 25th year at the University.
My goal with this choir is to infect these students
with the love of choral music.
ELIZA DAVIS: One of the things that
has been so great about being president of Chapel Choir
is being able to work with Penna,
and have her sort of guide me.
I think she was sort of the first adult at Princeton
that I really felt comfortable with
and I really felt sort of had my back in anything.
I feel so lucky to have had her.
I think Princeton can be really hard at times,
and Penna has always been sort of that constant presence
and guide for me here, which has been --
I'm extremely grateful for that.
PENNA ROSE: So please, do everything you can.
You're right here.
All you've got to do is look up and there's the stick
right in your face, right?
They're just imagining it, and it's
happening right on the beat.
They're just amazing, amazing, amazing.
So please be equally amazing.
How about that?
All right, good.
ERIC FUNG: I think that Penna really
does emphasize making the music mean something to you
and connecting with the text and the --
and the -- the music.
She is definitely a mentor figure, not just to me, but
to everyone else in the choir and to whomever
wants to have that relationship with her.
She will definitely be open to that.
PENNA ROSE: So you turned your thesis in.
ELIZA DAVIS: Yes, I turned my thesis in.
PENNA ROSE: Good, OK, tell me all about it. I 47 00:01:53,660 --> 00:01:54,910 What was it about?
ELIZA DAVIS: So it was about -- so I was writing about
the Millennium Development Goodoals, and how --
PENNA ROSE: Princeton is competitive,
and I think can be difficult. So I
want them to have a safe space where
everybody is treated the same.
This space becomes their home.
When the kids graduate and they talk about it,
after they've graduated, they talk about
the community of the choir and how important that is to them.
[CHOIR SINGING]
JENNIFER BORGHI: Penna taught me probably
the most essential lesson about making music
that I have ever received and which
I see embodied by only the best and rarest musicians
that I've encountered since --
since I left here.
Penna said to me one day, never ever, ever,
put yourself before the music.
That sums up the way Penna makes music.
That sums up music in this chapel and the reason
why I keep coming back.
Penna is one of very few people I know who conveys that over
and over again.
What you are singing, what you are saying is important.
ERIC FUNG: From Opening Exercises,
to yesterday's Baccalaureate, she
has filled our undergraduate lives
with heavenly sounds and angelic music.
And she has not only served as a mentor,
but has also been a great friend to many in the audience today.
We would like to thank her and extend her an honorary class
membership.
And we're surely happy to have her in the ranks.
Welcome to the great Class of 2017, Penna.
[APPLAUSE]
PENNA ROSE: I tell the students often, um, in this space,
there has been music going on.
There have been a lot of words also spoken in this space.
But there's been a lot of music.
And the music from those former times is in the stones.
And so this is your opportunity to put your music
in those stones, so that in future generations,
that sound is going to reverberate
with what they are doing.
And it's very important.
That is part of your legacy at Princeton
is to put your beautiful sound in these stones.
I've never found anything else that feeds me like music does.
I tried to do other things a couple of times,
and I was miserably unhappy.
So I said, all right, I give up.
I will just do this, because it brings me such joy.
[SINGING, MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
[CHEERING]