BCC congratulates the 2025 winner of the 14th Annual Herbert Randolph Kiser Memorial Scholarship, Jo Almond!
The Herbert Randolph Kiser Memorial Scholarship was established to help young people realize their full potential. Herbert Randolph "Randy" Kiser was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1956. Randy received the majority of his formal education in the Boston Public Schools and last attended Boston English. In May 1974, Randy was returning home from work when he was approached by two young men on Gallivan Boulevard near Neponset Circle in Dorchester. Randy’s life was taken as a result of a racially motivated attack.
The scholarship was established for the singular purpose of helping a young person realize their full potential since Randy is unable to realize his. Recipient(s) are graduating Boston Children's Chorus seniors who are bound for college, who are civically engaged, and who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity and the well-being of humanity.
This year, one Herbert Randolph Kiser Memorial Scholarship was given to Jo Almond, and she received $5,000.
Jo Almond
Prompt: BCC’s mission lies at the intersection of choral music and social change. How would you describe the impact of BCC on your life and those of your peers?
From Symphony Hall to the Streets: BCC and Climate Justice
It was a year after Donald Trump was elected president that I performed in my first Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute concert with the Boston Children’s Chorus. I sat with the rest of Dorchester Advanced Training (DAT), leaning over the gilded balcony to watch the Premier Choir (who seemed impossibly old to me at the time) begin the opening verses of “We Shall Overcome.” Finally, TK, the conductor, turned around to face us and raised up his hands.
The entire balcony stood. “We are not afraid,” we sang, as one, a singular voice that buzzed in my throat and ears, thundering through the hall. As tears filled my eyes, I thought, “I wish we could go to the White House and do this performance for the President.” I didn’t have a clear idea of how, but I knew such a cruel administration would be rendered powerless by our defiant beauty.
We didn’t go to the White House, but I took the conviction that performance solidified within me, and began to get more involved in climate justice activism. I attended the September 2019 school strike in Boston, and still remember the euphoria of entering the crowd. Surely, with this many of us disrupting the system we could do anything. It was a ghost of the feeling I’d had in Symphony Hall the year before– pure people power thundering through my veins as I marched, pouring out of my throat as I chanted and sang.
In ninth grade, I was thrilled to learn BCC’s season theme was The Rising Tide–all about climate justice. By that time, I’d been involved in climate organizing for years but the pandemic had been a big interruption, and I was feeling more hopeless than inspired.
Early that season, BCC singers had the opportunity to join the cast of a musical about young climate activists– WILD: A Musical Becoming. The show captured sentiments I’d long felt but had never articulated. “You have to learn to compromise, but compromise will kill us all!” sang the main character, Sophia. This was a refrain I’d heard so many times as an activist– sure, a Green New Deal would be great, but “that’s just not how the world works.” Through WILD, I began to appreciate the power of music to transcend established political paradigms.
WILD was also key to rebuilding my community at BCC after a year of online practice during the pandemic. As a member of the core cast, I spent twelve-hour days with my fellow BCC singers, mostly rehearsing, but sometimes just sitting backstage. A lot of us, including myself, were going through intense mental health challenges at the time. My friends at BCC helped me feel like I wasn’t alone– not in my deep anguish and anger over the climate crisis, nor with my mental health struggles.
The friendships that were solidified during WILD rehearsals and performances brought me all the way to the Statehouse that March. I helped organize the biggest Boston school strike since the pandemic, and brought along a dozen BCC friends. I delivered a speech in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse’s golden dome, my voice joining 300 others as we screamed into the cool air: “OUR FUTURE– IS MORE IMPORTANT– THAN YOUR PROFITS!”
What I remember most about that day is not the crowd or our demands for the Governor. I remember how, after the speech, I stumbled down the giant stone steps, overwhelmed, and fell into the arms of my closest friends, most of them from BCC. I remember a surge of gratitude cutting through the frenetic energy of the event. The BCC community was skipping class to be here, with me, with the movement. We weren’t just performers in the fight for social change; we meant it.
After my speech, we marched from the Statehouse to Boston City Hall. As we arrived, all the BCC singers gathered in front of the crowd and passed around a megaphone, performing a call-and-response song we had learned earlier that year called “Somebody’s Hurtin’ My Brother.” Creating our own spin on the lyrics, the verses went:
Big banks are funding our oil, and it’s gone on
Far too long!
Later that spring, for our last concert of The Rising Tide season, I was determined to help our performance catalyze real action, and not shy away from the hard truths of the climate crisis that my friends and I had sung about in the streets. I worked with my conductor to write the scripts for the concert, emphasizing the disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on marginalized groups and countries– as well as the importance of taking collective action. The concert was not always uplifting, but the darker truths and mournful music we let into that space cultivated a more honest kind of hope– the kind that demands action, while affirming that we have power, together.
Throughout my activist career, I’ve been searching for actions that would make me feel as powerful as I did in fifth grade at Symphony Hall. BCC has shown me the true end goal of our efforts to build people power–that thundering mass of possibility I’ve felt at big protests and concerts– as well as the way to get there. It is all about community, our relationships with each other mirroring the strength of our coalitions of social movements. Those communities, and the space they create, allow us to find the kind of honest hope that catalyzes real action. As I take my passion for climate justice and social justice organizing to Wesleyan University next year, I will remember both the sound of undefeatable music, and the feeling of my friends right beside me as we add our voices to the crowd.
Prior Scholarship Recipients
- Jillian Baker
- Allyssa Almeida
- Sabrina Marzouki
- Kevin Chan
- Nafisa Wara
- Jessie Rubin
- Ana Mejia
- Emmaline Dillon
- David Blitzman
- Leo Kotomori
- Alex Lee-Papstavros
- Carrie Shao
- Austin Moore
- Sophia Bereaud
- Hal Cox
- Matthew Auguste
- Elizabeth Rozmanith
- Shantel Teixeira
- Branden Garcia
- Grace Wagner
- Abigail Gauch
- Neha Saravanan
- Erica Weinreich
- Simone Isabelle
- Jillian Ryan
- Rory Li
- Ella Vargas
About Herbert Randolph Kiser
Herbert Randolph Kiser was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1956. Herbert, affectionately called Randy by his family and friends, received the majority of his formal education in the Boston Public Schools and last attended Boston English.
On May 15, 1974, Randy was returning home from work when a car occupied by two young men approached him on Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester. One of the young men exited the vehicle and a brief altercation ensued.
Most, unfortunately, Randy’s life was then taken.
The young man shared that it was solely out of racial hatred that he ended Randy's life. Randy was 18 years old at the time.
The Herbert Randolph Kiser Memorial Scholarship was established for the singular purpose of helping a young person to realize their full potential since Randy was unable to realize his.
The annual scholarship was founded in 2006.
Randy was raised in a family that believes fervently in the value of all people. Believing deeply in the mission of the BCC organization, the scholarship chose BCC as its home in 2012.
Since then, 27 graduating seniors have received scholarships, totaling more than $96,000.
Past Scholarship recipients have attended or are currently attending such colleges and universities as The University of Southern California, Notre Dame, Ithaca College, Elon, Clark, UMASS, Harvard, Boston University, Berklee College of Music, Northeastern University, Johns Hopkins, Smith College, and more.
Randy's family is committed to social justice, fairness, inclusion, diversity in all of its forms, and supporting all efforts in support of peace and reconciliation in society.
