Hi-Line Living: Hi-Line schools congregate for choir festival

Middle school choir students from across the Hi-Line congregated at Havre High School Monday for the annual choir festival.

Event organizer and Havre Middle School choir teacher Ronda Minnick said Monday before the concert that March is Music in Our Schools Month and the festival is just one way to celebrate students in musical programs.

“It’s been going on for years,” she said. “It’s kind of a tradition.”

This is Minnick’s seventh year teaching choir at Havre Middle School, she said, although she remembers bringing her students down for the festival when she was teaching in Chinook.

Minnick said this year 190 students were registered for the festival, which was higher than the previous year.

This is definitely a good turn out, she said, adding that in the past they had approximately 160 to 170 students registered. She said part of the reason of the higher registration was that three more schools got involved this year, Cut Bank, North Star and Malta middle schools.

In the past, Cut Bank and North Star have been involved, she said, but neither has come consistently. This was Malta’s first year, she said, in the past they’ve had the former Malta Middle School choir teacher as the guest director, but Malta has never sent a class to participate.

Malta Middle School choir teacher Nancy Murdock said she had only brought 10 of her students. She said her entire choir is approximately 40 students and she thought that may be too many kids to bring for the festival. She added that the event went well, and she would like to bring at least 15 students next year.

She said she was interested in the festival because she knew the former Malta Middle School choir teacher had guest directed a few times. After he retired at the end of last school year, she said, she was hired and wanted to take her students to this event, thinking it would be a good experience and didn’t want her students to miss out.

Schools coming together

The festival has no real limit of students that can participate, Minnick said, although she is sure, eventually, they will create one.

“I think that some of these schools are very limited as far as they may have only a small choir, 12 kids or something,” she said. “They really can’t do some of these pieces in there own school, just due to their numbers and what not, so when we group together like this for a festival, they are able to participate and sing music that they would normally not be able to do in their own school.”

She said rural schools have a difficult time with choir classes because they don’t having many students. When she taught down in Chinook, Minnick said, she had two girls who sang alto, two girls at soprano and two guys. She added that it is hard to sing more complex kinds of music with classes that size.

Events like the festival, she said, they are able to do much more difficult music, which is better for learning experience.

Minnick said that also being able to let the choir students travel to another area is fun and exciting for the students.

She added that all the students at the festival were in either seventh or eighth grade. Sixth-graders are excluded because their voices usually are not developed enough for the difficulty of the music.

These festivals are also good for the teachers, too, she said, having all the different directors, who don’t usually see each other, get together.

It’s really nice to sit in the hospitality room and just relax and talk to the other directors about music stuff, problems they are seeing and what is going well with each of their respective programs, Minnick said.

She said across all the schools choir teachers are seeing fewer students sign up for classes and after school activities. She said she thinks this is because students so many other activities and electives to choose from than they had years ago. This is not necessarily bad, she said, but the festival helps with attracting students.

“They talk about it, they tell their friends to get in second semester because of the choir concert,” she said.

Murdock said Wednesday that it was a great experience for her students and a well run event.

“We felt it was a very worthwhile experience that we would like to do again,” she said.

She said it was great for the students to be able to get out and see what other schools are doing. The experience opened up their eyes to what is around them, she said, adding that it was also fun for her students to meet other students and preform in that larger group.

“My students all came back with a very positive experience and telling other students that it was great and everybody should try it,” Murdock said.

Planning the event

Second semester students for most of the schools are the ones who are able to participate in the festival, Minnick said. Although, students who want to participate from the previous semester can, she said. In the past she has had very dedicated students from her previous class request to be involved, she said, and she has made them CDs of the songs so they can practice during their private time.

“That is something that we have done in the past,” she said. “They have to do a lot of work on their own.”

She said she starts sending the other schools the music for the festival before winter break. Many of the schools have been involved in the festival for a long time and have libraries of music. She said she likes to add two songs every year to the library.

Minnick said she does this so the schools have something to work on in January. Post holidays is usually a very slow time for choir because all of the different concerts that are performed before the end of the year, she said.

The festival is a benefit to the students because they also select a guest director for the event, she said. Sometimes she can tell her students multiple times to do something, but hearing those instructions from a guest director reinforces what she has been teaching, she said.

“We find it better to use someone that is not one of their directors,” she said. “… I can say all of these things 10 times, a hundred times, about what they should be doing vocally and how we should be singing these things and they don’t always do it. But when another director say the same things that I’m saying, I think that’s good for them to hear it like, ‘You know, we are not just making this up. This what you do in order to sing well.’”

Guest director and Havre High School choir teacher Danielle Stoll said Wednesday she thought the event went very well. She added that the students were very attentive during the event.

“I thought they did a fine job at the concert,” she said.

She said she got involved after Minnick asked her. She said she didn’t know what to expect because she had never worked with the festival before or any of the students.

“It was fun,” she said. “It took some work to get them to focus, I mean, there are 190 middle school students and one of me.”

Stoll added that the students were respectful and her favorite part was seeing the energy the kids brought.

She said she also appreciated all of the parents who came out locally and from the other parts of the region to support their kids’ love of music.

After this first experience, she said, she would be interested if asked again. She said if the middle school wanted to continue to have the event at the high school she would be happy to be involved, even if she wasn’t directing.

Stoll said that she is looking forward to working with the students in the future who want to take choir at the high school.

Minnick said that occasionally they are also able to find a male guest director. This is a benefit because most of the teachers are women and cannot sing the same way as men.

The songs

One song for the festival was axed, Mozart’s “Ave Verum,” she said. This is a difficult piece and is very challenging for middle school students, Minnick said, adding that this piece was not ready in time and needed to be cut.

Murdock said she really enjoyed the songs that they performed, her personal favorites being the one that was accompanied by bass, played by Jamie Stoll, and the drums, played by Aria Pratt.

She said that after the show she asked her students what their favorite song was. She said they told her the song they “could not get out of their head” was “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin.

“They couldn’t go to sleep because they kept thinking of this song,” she said.

Stoll said that her personal favorite was “Blue Skies,” as well. The song had an up-tempo jazz standard with the bass, piano and drums all playing together with the singers. She said she thought they had a lot of fun with it.

“It was a great experience for the students,” she said. “I enjoyed the day, I enjoyed getting together with the other music teachers and discuss what they are doing with their classes, my kids came away with a positive experience.”

Stoll said this festival was for the benefit of the students, helping students to get together with singers from other towns, showing them that they are not alone. Showing kids that choir is fun and cool, she said, and building a relationship with other students around them.

Murdock said that she had to applaud Minnick and Stoll for their wonderful work with the festival.

“Music is just such a powerful force and seeing all those students coming together and sharing that together was great,” Murdock said.