On Thursday, Oct. 10, the North’s Annual Fall Choir Concert was held in the big gym from 7:30-9 p.m. The concert consisted of performances from the choir classes: Concert Chorale, Chamber Choir, Valholla, Concert Choir Treble, All-Suburban/All-State Qualifiers, AIT, and Concert Choir Mixed. All of the classes performed individual and unique songs such as the Chamber Choir’s performance of Dies Irae, a famous melody of the Latin Gregorian Chant, and the Valholla performing an acapella version of If I Ever Fall in Love, an r&b/soul love song by the male group Shai, created by the group Pentatonix.
The North Choir has been preparing for the fall concert for about a month, working on different technical works to get their voices and songs to sound just how they want them to before the big night.
“The preparation is ongoing. All the work, the basic technical work, and the community work that we’re doing everyday leads to concert,,” said choir teacher Brian Reeves.
Some choir students who performed at the concert stated that the concert was fairly good, saying that the techniques learned and worked in class paid off, making their performance a success as well.
“I think we were pretty blended while we were singing and pretty loud enough for people Chamber Choir.
One of the preparation tasks was picking out the pieces for the concert. This is a long and tedious process to do because of the thought and thoroughness that comes with it. In the end it really does work out and gives the students something to have fun with, and enjoy, but learn from as well.
“We first look at the piece itself; what is it trying to say, what story do we want to tell, what are the challenges involved with this piece, why are we singing this piece, and what are we hoping to get out of this piece. Then, we try to dig in by getting through the technical elements first, and then hopefully by the time the concert comes around we are trying to communicate and tell that story effectively to the audience,” said Reeves.
One of the biggest struggles that the North Choir had trouble with was actually connecting to the pieces they were performing and engaging with the story that was being told from it.
“There’s always struggles. It’s much easier for students to connect with music that they immediately enjoy and listen to all the time – that’s pretty easy for any of us to do -but part of being in school is learning what you already don’t know. Some of the music was not immediately what the students gravitated to, so helping them to understand what that story is, how can we tell that story, and what we can learn from this can hopefully soon like that piece,” said Reeves.
The North Choir did overcome most of these struggles and performed well from Reeves’ perspective at the concert on Thursday evening, making the concert even more enjoyable.
“I think all of the classes demonstrated improvement. I’m proud of all the kids. I would say that I was particularly impressed with the musicianship shown by the senior leadership. I thought that they did just a really tremendous job last night,” said Reeves.
Even though the Fall Choir Concert was a success, there is always room for improvement before the next concert, which is the Winter Concert in December.
“For the next concert we could work more on expressions. Mrs. Roback tells us a lot that we need to work on looking like what the song means. A lot of us just stand still and sing, but choir isn’t just singing, it’s also expressing yourself while singing,” said senior Tiffany Moy who is in Concert Choir Treble.
“It’s an ongoing process of trying to subordinate your personal interests for that of the choir: working with each other, working with the members of the group to sing better and do things together…that’s just what we are always trying to work on,”said Reeves.