Bringing the Music Back

A decade after the Boys Choir of Harlem’s scandalous fall from grace, its adult alumni are determined to revive its legacy and restore its name.

Photos by Jessica Bal

On West 132nd Street in Harlem one day late last year, a group of twenty or thirty tiny kids, boys in khaki pants and girls in green and blue skirts, walked up the aisle of St. Aloysius Church, clutching single flowers and their teachers’ hands. The St. Aloysius preschool was performing and their singing was shaky—one particularly adorable boy sang to the ceiling of the church rather than to his waving parents—but the adults, clutching cameras, nonetheless met the group with a standing ovation. Also performing that day, to an equally enthusiastic reception, was the Alumni Ensemble of the Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem—a group of twenty- and thirty-something men and women, all of whom grew up performing in either the Boys Choir of Harlem or its sister Girls Choir at the height of the two groups’ acclaim.

“I’m starting a new initiative,” said Michael Glover after the performance. Glover is a twenty-eight-year-old audio technician with long dreadlocks and a permanentl…