The odds were slim.

Nearly a decade ago, Gabe Lewis-O’Connor sat in the Lied Center with his family, enthralled by the sounds of a men’s choral group called Chanticleer. There was an instant in the middle of the final song of the evening when Lewis-0’Connor, then a baritone-bass in the Lawrence High School sophomore choir, glimpsed his future.

“It was a moment of awakening,” he recalls.

He knew then that he wanted to sing in a professional choral ensemble one day. He never dreamed he’d become part of the very group that inspired his career choice.

Yet that’s precisely what happened in late February when Lewis-O’Connor auditioned and was invited to join Chanticleer. He got the call from the group’s musical director, Joseph Jennings.

“It was definitely one of those speechless moments,” says Lewis-O’Connor, a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music. “Honestly, at this point, I almost have trouble believing that they’re not making a mistake, that they didn’t call the wrong person on the list to tell them that they made it.”

Lewis-O’Connor’s mom knows better.

“The whole time we’ve raised both of our boys up, we’ve told them there really are no barriers, that you can do whatever you want. And Gabe has firmly pursued that belief,” says Nancy O’Connor, director of education and outreach at the Community Mercantile Co-op, 901 Iowa.

“So although I was surprised, on some other level I knew that this was a real possibility with him, that this dream would become a reality. I guess I always thought some day I’d see him at the Lied Center.”

Gabriel Lewis O'Connor grew up in Lawrence and dreamed of one day joining the prestigious choral group Chanticleer. A month ago, he auditioned for the professional ensemble and was hired.

New ground

That won’t be happening too soon; Lawrence is not a stop on San Francisco-based Chanticleer’s 2006-2007 season. But Lewis-O’Connor will get to perform in venues across the country (including Kansas City next April) when he joins the group this summer.

He’ll also be keeping elite company.

Chanticleer has just 12 members and is one of only two professional male vocal ensembles in the United States. The Grammy Award-winning group, founded in 1978, performs everything from Renaissance to jazz, gospel to commissioned work by contemporary composers.

Music director Jennings says Lewis O’Connor will be a good fit in the group.

“He’s a very good singer,” Jennings says. “And he’s very serious about singing. … We’re looking forward to having him join us.”

Lewis-O’Connor will be leaving the Kansas City Chorale and his UMKC graduate program to join Chanticleer, with whom he signed a one-year contract worth about $40,000, plus benefits and travel expenses. He – and everyone else in the group – must re-audition every year. There’s no guarantee that a vocalist will be asked to return, although one member has been singing with Chanticleer for 16 years.

“I think because it’s going to be such a different life and a different world,” Lewis-O’Connor says, “it’s almost hard for me to say what I’ll be able to handle – if it will be something where I’ll want to be in the group as long as I can, or after three years or five years I’ll get burned out and need to go back to school.”

In his blood

Music has been part of Lewis-O’Connor’s life since infancy. He and his brother, LHS junior Isaac Lewis O’Connor, grew up in a home without television.

Gabriel Lewis O'Connor grew up in Lawrence and dreamed of one day joining the prestigious choral group Chanticleer. A month ago, he auditioned for the professional ensemble and was hired.

“Their creative minds have been set free to read and experience music,” Nancy O’Connor says. “It’s just part of the way we have always functioned is to have music and literature and art.”

And entertaining always has come naturally for Gabe, says his father, Jim Lewis, program director at Van Go Mobile Arts.

“He used to sing ‘Angeline the Baker’ when he was 3 years old,” Lewis recalls, chuckling. “He’d put on a cowboy hat and sing it with a western accent.”

Lewis-O’Connor started taking piano lessons as a 5-year-old student at Raintree Montessori School. He joined the Lawrence Children’s Choir in sixth grade and discovered that voice was his forte. Artistic director Janeal Krehbiel remembers him as a good listener with lots of enthusiasm, who handled his voice change with grace.

She couldn’t be happier about Lewis-O’Connor’s new gig.

“It’s one of the most prestigious male vocal ensembles in the world,” she says of Chanticleer. “The opportunities he’ll have to see the world are incredible because he’ll be doing so much traveling. … He’ll be doing great literature. He’ll be in a full-time job that he loves, and I just think it’s wonderful.”

Cathy Crispino concurs. She had Lewis-O’Connor in choir throughout his high school years and says he was part of a very strong class of male singers who graduated in 2000.

“They really loved singing together,” she says, noting that they frequently asked her to play Chanticleer recordings in class. “Gabe has always been about ensemble singing. He is a fine soloist, but what he really loves is making music with other people.”

Sound entity

Lewis-O’Connor solidified his love for ensemble singing at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. Most of his peers in the vocal program there were working toward solo careers in opera, but he was ensnared by the magic of the group sound.

It’s what continues to mesmerize him about Chanticleer.

“Their sound is a single organism,” he says. “Yes, there are 12 voices singing most of the time … but the sound is still one entity. And that sound is greater, I think, than the sum of its parts.

“That’s the sort of idea that’s fascinating to me – that you can sing by yourself all the time, but to have voices together so that passion and that sound and emotion can become something completely different, something more than just singing, is amazing to me.”