The choir had their first performance of the year at their Fall Concert on Oct. 1 at the Hays Performing Arts Center, showing off the skills the students learned throughout the beginning of the school year. 

“I felt really good about the show,” senior librarian Kylie Miller said. “This was our first concert with our new director, so it was very interesting to see how it was going to turn out, but I think it did come out really well.”

Making up the concert, the school’s choir sang seven of their well-versed songs: ‘Come To Me, My Love’, ‘Jubilate Deo’, ‘Swilo Yini’, ‘Landate Dominum’, ‘Omnes Gentes’, ‘There is no frigate like a book’, and ‘Yonder Come Day Waiting’. At the end of performance, the choir grouped into an ensemble to carry out a sort of dance while singing ‘Swilo Yini.’ Families and interested audience members were let in for free to watch the performance and fill the seats.

“I thought they had excellent concert etiquette, and were very well-behaved,” choir director Nicholas Standish said. “I enjoyed getting to perform with them, and I really enjoyed the things they have been working on in terms of tone and some of the dynamics in musical things. I thought they did an excellent job with that stuff.”

Over the past seven weeks, choir students diligently rehearsed for the performance. Every day in class, they spent an estimated hour and a half working on various procedures such as sight reading, solfege drills, vocalizing, and tone-building. 

“We were well prepared,” sophomore Addison Powell said. “Our director is really good at his job, so the show went well.”

Coming from content performers and a proud director, the choir program believed their opening show was a satisfactory success. With this in mind, their upcoming winter concert is happening on Nov. 21, providing another opportunity for people to examine the choir’s abilities and be involved with reported sing-along carols and solos at the upcoming performance.

“I’m really thrilled about getting to do some more music and pushing through,” Standish said. “We don’t have as much time this period to work on some of that, so it’s going to be a kind of grind to get all that music learned. But I’m excited; they showed a lot of potential and they’ve grown so much from the beginning of the year, so I’m excited to see how far they go.”