The sound of voices singing fills the auditorium and students go over their dances one last time. After months of rehearsal and preparation, the choral program will close out the year with their annual spring gala performances.
Today April 30, the annual gala will open, with the theme being ‘Rags to Riches.’ The chorus has been working on this since early October, learning choreography to songs and harmonies for those numbers. For most of the year they work on choral songs for concerts, but during Gala they do a variety of many different songs based off of a common theme.
“It’s basically a show where we perform a whole bunch of different songs from different eras. It’s much more exciting [than a chorus concert]. We do some [songs] from the 80’s, we do some modern, and our theme this year is ‘Rags to Riches,’” junior Katie Ford said.
The choir is split up into five sections, McIntosh Singers, Chiefs, Bella Voce, Cantabile Women and Cantabile men. Cantabile is the only mixed group out of the five and consists of some of the guys from Chiefs and all of the Cantabile Women.
“The choirs are separated by singing capability. We are auditioned at the end of the year for a grade on our sight reading, tone, pitch, matching capabilities and blending. The highest choir for men is Cantabile and the lowest is Chiefs. For girls the highest is Cantabile, then Bella Voce and then McIntosh Singers,” sophomore Jonah Greenstein said.
All of these groups combine for the opener and the closer, those two numbers being ‘Thrift Shop’ and ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’ But, there are also soloists and small groups throughout the show.
“My favorite number is probably 9 to 5, (performed by Bella Voce). I really like Dolly Parton,” Ford said.
In late February the top choirs, Bella Voce and Cantabile, went on a gala retreat at Banning Mills. They spent three days learning choreography and reviewing their group numbers.
“At gala retreat, we spent the days locking in on our Cantabile combined piece music and we learned our Cantabile combined piece dance. It was a lot of fun and very helpful for accuracy,” Greenstein said.
The show dates are tonight at 7 p.m, May 1 at 7 p.m, May 2 at 2 p.m and 7 p.m. Tickets can be found at this link and you can also purchase them at the door.
