I’m going to break my choirs this spring.
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Now that I’ve got your attention, here’s the story:
The choirs at my school are going to have a full semester. First, in February we will participate in a Black History celebration organized by our principal. Not too difficult as we will only be doing two numbers including Lift Every Voice, and our guys are good enough to have it ready by the end of the month. Plus we will have two extraordinary soloists from our groups.
That’s the easy gig.
The kids will be spending most of their time preparing for a full length concert in late April. Usually we have combined schools to present a concert, but this time we’re gunning for a concert by ourselves, in our own theater, in our own school.
After that, we go in May to a Music in the Parks festival, where the kids sing, get critiqued, get a trophy (or two depending), and spend the rest of the day playing at Six Flags. All choirs are participating, so there will be two pieces all will learn.
And what a program. The beginners will be doing some pop, some movie soundtrack music, and an absolutely lovely piece written by John Rutter:
This picks up about a third of the way into the song
The real excitement is going to be on the Intermediate/Advanced side. This is where I’m going to break them. First, is one of the songs all the choirs will be singing, as it is one of the entries in our Music in the Parks festival, and also the graduation song, where we invite graduating seniors to come sing with us one last time:
There is an “alternate ending” to this, which you can hear at the end when it gets quiet and the music stops before continuing to the final ending. The chords are just crunchier and tastier there.
And now how I’m going to break them. I finally found the song I had been looking for for years. This arrangement broke me when I first saw it. The students will write a care, a worry, something that weighs on them on one side, then something that brings them joy, heals them on the other. These will be randomly distributed amongst the members. You’ll see what happens.
Like I said, this broke me when I first saw it. We’re going to do this in performance. I want to have some lessons as the kids are writing their cares and healings down. I’m hoping this brings them much much closer than they ever have been. The last video is a recording of a song we did in the Fall, but became a surprise hit with the kids. It will be our second number for Music in the Parks:
So, after you have cried and smiled, on to Tops!
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