David Kime

David Kime | Essay

3rd Place

Music

David Kime is a graduate student in BYU’s School of Music. He submitted an essay about his experience touring Europe with BYU Singers.

“This Zion community is perhaps the most significant memory and lesson I will carry from the tour: when united in our desire to follow Christ, we can become one in Him.”

Glimpses of Zion

By David Kime

The sun was quickly setting on a beautiful May evening in Brussels as we walked back to the hotel from an emotional final concert. It was our last evening of tour — the final hours of this academic year’s iteration of the BYU Singers.

After a concert, I usually look for the fastest way to bed, but that night was different — I did not want the experience to end. The beauty of what I had experienced that night, over the preceding three weeks and throughout all of the choir’s experiences that year was etched in my mind.

As an ensemble, we talk a lot about changing the hearts of others through our performing tours, but what I always forget is how much the experience changes me. The 2025 BYU Singers tour to Italy, Greece, Switzerland and Belgium was a transformative experience. I gained a deeper spiritual appreciation for and contextual understanding of the music I am training to conduct. I experienced countless simple miracles and manifestations of God’s love, and I saw glimpses of what I believe Zion will be like — and how BYU plays an integral role in building a covenant people prepared for the Savior’s return.

Between singing and occasionally accompanying, I had the opportunity to conduct a small group from Singers in Renaissance composer G.P. da Palestrina’s famed motet, “Sicut Cervus.” It never ceased to amaze me that within many of the churches where we sang, the sounds of Palestrina’s music might have resonated at liturgical services for centuries. Simultaneously, in a few churches where I had the opportunity to play a Latter-day Saint hymn at the organ, I realized that in all probability, a hymn like “Come, Come Ye Saints” had never before been heard in that place.

To experience Italian choral music in its homeland was a great blessing. As a musician, I left the tour with a greater appreciation for the setting and context of the music I sing, conduct and

play. You understand a text by Dante more fully when the audience smiles in anticipation after hearing that it is what you will sing next. Similarly, something about the centuries-old stone walls and painted frescoes of an Italian parish church brings Palestrina’s counterpoint to life in a way that you could not experience otherwise. Going forward, I will forever approach this music with newfound respect, gratitude and, I hope, understanding.

My time spent in these beautiful places with wonderful people provided countless reminders of God’s love. I was inspired by centuries of Christian disciples and their stories, retold through art, architecture and music. I felt increased gratitude for those followers of Christ whose devotion prepared the way for the Restoration. Whether it was the Duomo of Milan, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, a parish church in Switzerland or an Orthodox cathedral in Greece, each sacred place bore record of a people who desired to worship God and sacrificed a great deal to do so.

President C. Shane Reese emphasized upon his inauguration in 2023 that becoming the Brigham Young University that prophets have long foretold requires that “each student’s eternal progression must remain our foremost concern.” When I consider this phrase, a flood of tour memories fills my mind: an audience member’s eyes filled with tears, a chance to bear my testimony to a ward in Rome, singing hymns in a public square in Thessaloniki, a great conversation over lunch with a choir friend, making new friends while walking through an ancient town, laughing together on the bus or hunting for gelato after a long day, and feeling the Spirit in abundance after singing “I Am a Child of God” in Italian as an unexpected concert encore. This deeply inspiring tour experience lifted my sights toward heaven as I experienced God’s goodness and His love for and through His children.

While the entire tour included a succession of sacred and memorable experiences, I was unprepared for the depth of the Spirit that filled my heart when, rounding a corner in the Rome Temple Visitors’ Center, I came face to face with an imposing replica of Thorvaldsen’s Christus, surrounded by the sculptor’s renderings of Christ’s Apostles. Physically imposing and spiritually stirring, the sight was rivaled only by the view from the windows opposite the statues: the Rome Italy Temple, surrounded by beautiful varieties of plants, flowers, fountains and symbolic olive trees.

There were many beautiful moments and stunning places on the tour, but none touched me as deeply as this physical manifestation of the Savior’s restored gospel, administered by and practiced in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was reminded that our efforts to share Christ’s gospel through music are just a small but important part of the Lord’s work. What a blessing to be involved in such a work!

On every BYU Singers tour in which I have participated, I have learned more about what Zion will be like. When you spend three intense weeks with a small group of people, eventually you will experience social and emotional friction. Our tour was no exception, but the reactions to that friction were exceptional. I was inspired by the efforts of choir members to create a community of belonging. I was grateful for my own opportunities to seek forgiveness, to forgive and to watch others do the same.

That cycle of humility and love begins to build a group of radically different people into a community founded on the Savior’s teachings, where each individual is an integral part of the whole. This Zion community is perhaps the most significant memory and lesson I will carry from the tour: when united in our desire to follow Christ, we can become one in Him.