Monday, January 7, 2008

Working with high school singers: a win-win-win situation

One of my choirs is entertaining the following proposal: feature a local high school choir as guest artist in our upcoming concert sets. They would be invited to sing a couple of numbers- hopefully one in collaboration with us. Here is why this is brilliant, from least to most important
  1. Fill more seats (at the very least, their chauffeurs, oh excuse me, I mean, parents, will have to attend!)
  2. Create a more varied program.
  3. Show the kids that its cool to sing when you are an adult- its not just something to do when you are in school.
  4. In our case, teach the kids about early music, which they may not get so much of in their choral program (check out kat's comments about pop music in high school choirs)
  5. Use choral music to build community.
My group has pretty high performing standards, so we'll have to make sure that we give the kids an assignment that they will excel at (while all the while having fun!). I am confident that this is possible, and look forward to working with some fresh, young talent.

4 comments:

kat said...

Call up Head-Royce!
I can't say enough about their music program. Then again, I'm a product of it, so I may be biased.....

Keith said...

I was in a chorus a few years back that did exactly this; the HS chorus sang (if I remember correctly) two numbers of their own, and joined us for Whitacre's "With a Lily in Her Hand." For a small chorus, the joint number might also be a pleasant chance to perform a piece that will sound better with larger forces.

Chris Rowbury said...

Never mind just HS choruses, this is a brilliant idea for any choir! As well as creating a more varied programme, it also means that your choir doesn't have the pressure of filling up a whole evening and can focus on the fewer songs that it will be singing. This is particularly helpful with the choirs that I run since our world music songs are often only 2 mins. long, so we can have up to 31 songs to rehearse for any given concert!

From the front of the choir

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