Dr. Sangeetha Rayapati Accepts LSM's Inaugural Alumni Award

Tom Bandar, Executive Director and Dr. Sangeetha Rayapati

LSM’s inaugural Alumni Award was presented to Dr. Sangeetha Rayapati (LSM Student 1990-91, Counselor 1997, Voice Faculty 2000-03) during LSM 2023 at the annual Board of Directors Reception on Saturday, July 22, 2023. With over 100 guests in attendance and just hours before the final orchestra concert, the energy in the room was palpable.

Dr. Rapayati delivered a heartfelt acceptance speech that expounded on the fortuitous ways LSM comes into our lives, continues to shape us, and leads us down paths of service and meaning. Read her touching full speech below:

Good Evening everyone. It truly is an honor to accept this award, I am humbled and privileged, but even more importantly, I am so very thankful to have been a part of the LSM community for over 30 years.

I am only standing here today because in 1990, I saw a poster in the choir room at my home church advertising Lutheran Summer Music at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois. I told my mom I wanted to go. My mom came from the Lutheran Choral Tradition in Minnesota and she must have leapt for joy inside to be able to send me as a camper and to see what all those years of piano lessons and singing might reveal. Neither she, nor I, nor anyone else, could have imagined the blessings that would flow from that experience and truly, I do believe that LSM set in motion a stream of blessings that continues to flow, renewing my spirit and helping me walk in the world with a rootedness to my vocational calling year after year.

I know that that stream of blessings flows through the lives of many other LSM alumni who are active in their communities doing important work. I’m amazed at how the life paths of friends and colleagues I had at LSM have crossed, time and again over the years. I went to college and grad school with at least 5 or 6 alumni and I’ve collaborated outside of LSM recitals with colleagues I served with on teaching staff. As program alumni, we can look back at our 4, 8, and sometimes 12 or 16 weeks of LSM experiences and point to transformational moments in rehearsal, performance, or in the cafeteria and practice rooms that have made a lasting impact on us. Some of us found our life partners here as well! In just a few days, Michael and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage- a relationship sprouted on this campus at LSM ‘97.

I know that the nurturing community of LSM is what I drew on when I told my voice teacher here at Valparaiso University, that I wanted to add a music major because I wanted to teach voice and help singers feel the way I had been made to feel as a student at camp. That deep care, recognition and fostering of talent, setting high performance goals, and infusing all of it with deep connection to faith life– that was what sustained me through my growing years and still is making an impact on my professional life as I do what I told my teacher I wanted to do.

It is an honor to accept this inaugural alumni award and one I will treasure always. I am so excited to see the direction LSM is going and to know that the transformative experiences I had are still happening for students. I wish you all the best as you guide the program into the future and create many more young people who are nurtured and renewed through the study of music and its place in our world.