The first half of November was quite busy for the Pioneer Choir students. The Women's choir practiced extra hard to have Dance on My Heart ready for the Women's Choral Exchange at Saratoga High School Monday, November 8th. At Saratoga, choirs from Harker, Homestead, Los Altos, Mountain View, Saratoga, Pioneer, and Valley Christian performed their own numbers and then everybody learned two songs from the opera "In Windsor Forest" by Ralph Vaughn Williams to perform as a mass choir to end the concert. In our 20-30 minutes per week of meeting, I thought we did well to learn Dance on My Heart. I felt the women performed it with spirit and the best I had heard it yet in the concert.
Also, on November 4th, my friend Aero Joo, who was visiting from Korea, came to Pioneer HS to teach us the proper Korean pronunciation for a song the entire Varsity Singers will learn for the Spring concert. It's mostly straight-forward and like Italian, but there are some unusual sounds in Korean compared to English, so it was wonderful to hear the pronunciations straight from a Korean speaker.
Wednesday, November 10th, the choral, instrumental and drama departments combined to perform a Veterans Tribute concert and invited the community to join us for an evening of gratitude for service to the country. The audience numbered around 500; some people had to stand in the back. The choirs looked and sounded very professional, the jazz band was outstanding, the orchestra had a very admirable first performance, wind ensemble played a variety of wonderful pieces, and the dramatic readings were very moving. The sheer numbers of attendees speaks to the value to the community of this performing arts event.
One of the Varsity Singers, Jennifer Moore, qualified, practiced and performed in the American Choral Directors Coastal Region Women's Honor Choir Saturday, November 20th. The performance was at Palo Alto's First United Methodist Church and was packed with parents and other audience members. I hope she found this a valuable experience--the repertoire was quite advanced and enjoyable for the audience and the guest conductors/music directors were wonderful ambassadors for the glory of choral music.
Meanwhile, choir students are preparing for the Holiday Choral Concert on Tuesday, December 7th. Also, we have been scheduled to sing at Christmas in the Park on Sunday, December 12th at 2:00pm. Singers in both choirs are learning music in many languages: English, Hebrew, Spanish, Latin, and German for this concert which promises to usher in the Holiday season. We also will have some guest instrumentalists join the choir for the holiday performance. The Holiday Band Concert will be Thursday, December 9th at 7:00pm. Hope all can attend.
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