Walking into the high school at 6:45 on a Tuesday evening, I did not know what to expect from the choir concert that was starting in 15 minutes. Suffice it to say, I was pleasantly surprised. The singers on stage had clearly worked hard to make the songs sound beautiful.

“I thought it went really well, the kids have been working pretty hard. This first concert is always a good one to get the groups singing together,” said Georann Whitman, choir director.

The singers agree that while the work is hard, it’s worth it.

“We go over music pieces everyday, our pieces take a lot of work,” said Olivia Lister, Madrigal, 10, “This year, we sang [at JCCC] with two college choirs, so that took up about three, four-ish weeks. We put a lot of our effort into those songs…after JCCC, we started really working hard on the songs for the concert.” 

The pieces that the groups sing aren’t just random songs that sound good. Each one was picked for a purpose.

“I try to get a mixture of songs from different time periods, songs from different cultures, songs from different genres…we had everything from spirituals to traditional Latin music to pop music,” said Whitman.

The interesting thing about music is that it can help heal and unite people after tragedies and times of stress.

“There were a couple of pieces that we picked because, for kids especially, music can be the answer to strange times. When bad things happen, music can provide an answer, or comfort. Destiny did a song called ‘I Choose Love,’ Madrigals did a song called ‘Give Us Our Peace,’ and ‘Show Us How To Love,’ and basically, those are in response to troubling times. Sometimes things are confusing…we get mass shootings and the political brewhaha, people being mean to each other, people not being humane to each other. Those [songs] resonated with the kids, and when they resonate with the kids they perform better and differently,” Whitman added.

Far from being an evening of being forced to sit in the auditorium for an hour while your peers sang a bunch of songs, this was a deep and meaningful experience filled with genuine emotion from the singers.