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Family, friends remember music student Kyle Stevens

Kyle Stevens asked his choir director five years ago if the chamber choir could perform “Precious Lord” for a competition. It was a birthday surprise for his father, Lowell Stevens, who loved the song.

“I wanted him to sing [this song] at my funeral, but Kyle didn’t want to wait until then,” Lowell Stevens said.

Five years later, scores of alumni from the Mt. San Antonio College Chamber Singers stood in the pews to sing “Precious Lord” for Kyle Stevens’s memorial concert.

Kyle Morgan Stevens died the morning of Monday, Oct. 19, at 25 in his apartment in Long Beach. The cause of death is still unknown pending the autopsy report, but family and friends said they were told it might have been a congenital heart defect.

Stevens was born Sept. 3, 1984 in the Fresno area. His affinity for music began when he was a child. He sang in children’s choirs at church, used random objects as microphones and played a toy guitar. He was always humming a tune or singing a song.

Stevens was studying for his bachelor’s degree in choral vocal music, with dreams of becoming a music teacher. He participated in Bob Cole Conservatory of Music Chamber Choir, the University Choir and the Forty-Niner Chorus at Cal State Long Beach. His degree will be awarded posthumously.

Nicknamed “The Subwoofer” for his deep bass voice, Stevens was described as an unmistakable presence in the music department, known not only for his love of music, but for his amazing sense of humor and kind heart.

Friends and family gathered at First Congregational Church of Long Beach to celebrate Stevens’ life on Saturday. The nonreligious event brought together all the choirs Stevens performed with during the past seven years to honor him. Choirs from CSULB, Mt. SAC and Rolling Hills United Methodist Church performed some of Stevens’ favorite pieces and others they felt he would have loved.

“This is a celebration [for Kyle] because that’s the way he’d like it,” said Stevens’ long-time friend and roommate Tyler Alessi, who organized the event.

He recounted memories about his time with Stevens, like hosting the Beach Café — an annual talent show at CSULB, working together at GameStop and weird moments when they were in each other’s heads. Their joint nickname was “Kyler.”

“We’d finish each other’s sentences,” Alessi said. “Even though our sentences didn’t make any sense.”

Alessi described Stevens as a big goofball who said what he felt and wasn’t sorry for it. But Stevens also had a kind, caring side. Alessi recalled when a mutual friend called Stevens after he had consumed a considerable amount of drugs and alcohol. Stevens drove to his house, threw out all his drugs and liquor and stayed with his friend all night to make sure he was OK.

“He told me [Kyle] saved his life that night,” Alessi said.

Stevens had a freewheeling spirit. Professor Bruce Rogers, conductor and director of choral activities at Mt. SAC, remembered seeing Stevens for the first time at a choir performance at Glendora High School; he was dressed in glitter and sequins. Despite Stevens’ skepticism, Rogers encouraged him to audition, and soon he was cracking jokes at Mt. SAC’s chamber choir rehearsals.

“Some will live to be 90 years old and never touch half as many souls as he did,” Rogers said.

Rogers described the chamber choir’s early morning rehearsals on Fridays. The tradition was to begin each rehearsal with an inspirational story, usually one from the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series. Stevens was fond of this tradition.

“Today, you are our inspirational story,” Rogers said. “You are our chicken soup.”

Stevens came to sing with the Rolling Hills United Methodist Church when Director of Music Chuck Dickerson found himself without a bass soloist. He called CSULB to see if they had anyone who could fill in. They sent Stevens.

Dickerson recalled Stevens’ generosity as he described the relationship between Stevens and a wheelchair-bound, elderly member of the church choir. He would leave home a little early to pick up the man, wheelchair and all, bring him to rehearsals and take him home afterward.

“He became a part of our family,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson recounted one of Stevens’ most exciting moments in music. On the last day of Stevens’ life, he needed someone to sing a certain line in their music during services. Dickerson asked if Stevens could sing it. Even though the line contained notes that were out of his range, Stevens gladly accepted.

After the first service, Dickerson found Stevens negotiating with the organist, Althea Waites, professor of keyboard studies at CSULB, to bring it down a few steps. Laughing, Dickerson told Stevens he would sing the line and Stevens could conduct. Stevens, again, gladly accepted.

Josh Odom, a close friend from Mt. SAC, recalled more of Stevens’s antics.

“We’ve all gotten links to horribly inappropriate things from Kyle,” Odom said, laughing. “[But] I hope we can look back and laugh and laugh and laugh. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

One of the greatest moments in the memorial concert was when the Mt. SAC alumni remained standing as Rogers conducted them from the front. The audience got to experience choral music the way Stevens had, standing in the back row, watching the conductor, hearing his peers singing some of his favorite pieces.

Jonathan Talberg, CSULB director of choral studies, remembers Stevens as “gregarious, fun-loving, kind beyond belief, funny as hell and loving.”

He described the many times the choir would erupt in laughter when Stevens uttered four words: “That’s what she said.”

Sometimes he would cross the line with his jokes and Talberg would kick him out of the studio. Stevens would be well-behaved for about two rehearsals, Talberg said, and then he would be back to the same jokes.

Talberg said he would always remember Stevens playing with toy Spiderman figurines, playing World of Warcraft, teaching him to love the television show “Family Guy” and “losing to me in beer pong.”

But Talberg said that most of all, he will remember that Stevens loved dropping the octave on a really tight harmony.

“Being in the center of an in-tune chord was like heaven for him,” Talberg said in an e-mail. “At 6 feet 6 inches tall, you couldn’t miss him, and his singer’s face was beatific.”

Katie Baziak, Stevens’s girlfriend of more than two and a half years, reminisced about days at Glendora High School, before they started dating. She remembered him riding a floor buffer, telling animal jokes she wasn’t fond of and giving her strange compliments like, “If you sang like that all the time, you’d actually be good.”

But there was never a moment he was unhappy.

“He was never sad except when his friend Dave said he was moving,” Baziak said. “And when they dropped his barbeque chicken pizza.”

In his philosophy of music education, Stevens wrote that from Beethoven to The Beatles, “music gave me a place to call home.”

Dickerson told the gathering, “You guys continue to do what you do, continue to make the great music that you have … to remember Kyle.”

 

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