Chorus sung their way into the new school year in a massive way. Their first show demonstrated the potential of the beginning choir, while showing and highlighting the advancements of the concert and honor choruses.

On October 12th, 2017, Cindy Durazo, director of choir, led the premiere choir concert for the 2017-18 school year. Accompanied by pianist, Greg Ramsey, all three tiers of choir, beginning, concert, and honor put on a show that was well above average, while showing great potential.

On the surface it may seem like just another opening show, unoriginal or lacking depth compared to one that would be done later in the year. As students tend to improve over time, their show would also improve.

Though that wasn’t true here, as the sound was equally mixed with tonal highs and lows, featuring songs such as “Inscription of Hope”, the most dreary song, to “Taylor the Latte Boy” as its most comedic and lighthearted.

“… we have a good selection of songs this time. And I think a lot of our songs this time are gonna be focused on tone quality and pitch, and it’s really working that sort of aspect of choir,” Ahren Boender, junior, said.

They accomplished this completely, tone and pitch are two key things that are important to any choir student. They lay the foundation for bigger and better complex songs and pieces.

“They’ve worked hard for the last nine weeks and I feel that if they stay focused and practice then they’ll have a fabulous performance,” Durazo said.

The structure of the performance was structured in such a way in which the most heavy and thoughtful songs are displayed first, while the lighter more open-ended songs came up last.

“We’ve talked about a variety of different musical aspects to convey the message and the emotion we’re trying to make,” Durazo said.

The quality of the the ‘girl song’ and ‘guy song’ this year were well above par, and well above anything else demonstrated within the show. They showed off a comedic side of music not regularly seen, known or expected.

Because of its shifting tone and scattered song placement, the first show didn’t really have an identity or theme. But that doesn’t make it worse because it offers the best in each of those categories.

“I would say, singing, and how grand it is, we start off with, We Gather to Sing. And we do a variety of things to make that happen and … we come together as a team, we come together as an ensemble, putting all of our differences aside to come together as one through singing, and I think that’s important,” Durazo said.

This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any personality to any of the choir students though. Boender is one such person who uses both his voice and his instrumental talent to play for the audience, in the chorus’ final song, I Will Sing

“… we end up with I Will Sing. I think the world is a better place when people are singing,”

Durazo said.