Students to perform concerts for the holidays
MINERAL COUNTY – To celebrate the holiday season, students from the schools in St. Regis, Alberton and Superior will each hold a special Christmas concert for the enjoyment of the community.
All three concerts are school-wide events and will feature students from kindergarten to high school seniors. However, each school has gone about it slightly differently.
According to Derek Larson, the music teacher at St. Regis Public School, his concert program is about 50/50 between the band and vocal performers. He said the kids began to practice in November, right after the fall concert.
Rather than a Christmas concert, Larson prefers to look at the performance as a winter concert. He said he always likes to put in some non-holiday pieces, but keeps everything focused on the celebration of the season.
“For the most part, they’re things you would hear around Christmas time,” said Larson. “I like to call it winter concert just to keep my options open for scheduling programs.”
The St. Regis music program requires students participate in the concert. According to Larson, the state assessment for music class is a performance assessment where kids need to meet specific performance standards for each grade level. This is achieved by participation in the concert.
“It’s kind of like their final test for the quarter,” Larson said. “It’s also a performance opportunity and something the community can attend as well.”
St. Regis has approximately 110 performers for the concert with 50 band members and 60 kids in the chorus. The performance will be Tuesday, December 17 at 7 p.m. in the St. Regis gym.
Unlike St. Regis, Mike Wolfe, music teacher for Alberton Public School, will have his program play almost all Christmas music. The Alberton band’s songs will all be variations of Christmas songs. However, the music may not be recognized as some of the songs Wolfe selected were carols from different countries.
“I don’t really do anything that doesn’t have to do with Christmas,” said Wolfe.
The concert will also be untraditional with how Wolfe arranged his songs. He said he likes to incorporate original songs and arrangements. He has worked with his classes to create some unique pieces for the concerts.
“It’s kind of guided composing,” said Wolfe. “In the end, I’m arranging the thing and putting it all together, but I use a lot of their ideas. They pick a rhythm…they come up with ideas of what reminds them of the holidays.”
This is not the only way Wolfe changes up the concert. In the past, the Alberton concert has also blended grade levels to make for different combinations.
“I’ve had third graders doing Jingle Bells on the recorder with fourth graders accompanying them on ukuleles,” said Wolfe.
While he could not give specific numbers, Wolfe said the entire elementary school is involved in the concert with “a higher than average” number of middle and high school students participating.
The Alberton Public School concert will be on Thursday, December 12 at 7 p.m. in the Alberton gym.
The Superior School District will do something a little different from the other two. Superior Elementary School will have a separate concert from the combined junior high and high school performance. According to Amber Winter, music teacher for the Superior schools, the program would be too big if all three schools combined for one concert.
“Our concert would be incredibly long if I tried to fit them all at one time,” said Winter. “We don’t like the kids to be there more than an hour, because they lose focus.”
The kids began to practice for the performance approximately two months ago. Winter said she began to work with the kids on this program right after the dinner concert in October.
Unlike the Alberton and St. Regis schools, Superior’s concerts were open to people who were not in the music program. However, there were some restrictions to who could participate. Winter did expect students not in the music program to audition for a part in the concert.
“It’s got to be a high school student who would be in a music class if they could fit it into their schedule,” said Winter. “But they do have to prove it will be quality and not just them messing around.”
The elementary school’s concert took place Monday evening. The concert featured approximately 100 kids and was formatted as a musical where members from kindergarten through sixth grade performed a 20-minute show. Afterwards, the fourth graders played music on recorders. The fifth and sixth grade bands also played on instruments.
The high school and junior high students will perform Monday, December 16 at 7 p.m. at the Superior High School gym. The concert will be free to attend with a reception afterwards. There will be approximately 31 students in the band and choir.
All three instructors said the concerts were very popular with the communities. Larson and Wolfe said most of the performances of past concerts were packed.
The instructors expect the concerts to be a lot of fun for the kids and the communities. The performances will bring the magic of the holiday to the county through the magic of music.