This past Monday, choir’s annual holiday concert was held at St. Francis Xavier Church.

In order to be ready for the holiday concert, choir began preparing directly after their Fall concert. They started even before Halloween, and continued through, “all of November, which seems like a long time,” said Choir Director, Carrie Gary.

2016/17 is Gary’s 10th year as Choir Director and she said it’s necessary, “You have to, and it just gets earlier and earlier every year,” especially because their first holiday event this year was Light Up Mt. Washington on December 2.

Advanced choir senior, Eric Duke, said, “We work on each section of every song, fixing every kink and problem we can before the concert date. By the time the concert comes, most of us know the songs by heart.”

Gary said it can be difficult to go from only learning just a few songs during the first nine weeks, to learning many more for the holiday concert. “… It’s a quick turn around… because we felt really good after the Fall concert, like we were super prepared and then the Christmas concert… we were still like worrying about things at the last minute,” said Gary.

Speaking of songs, there were a wide variety ranging from an African piece with percussion titled “Ogo Ni Fun Oluwa”, to a more modern song titled, “Text Me Merry Christmas.” Gary said it’s important to have different pieces of music because nobody wants to hear the same songs over and over. She said, “I feel like that’s the one good thing I do as a choir director… I do feel like I pick out very like, different literature.”

And a few of the pieces were quite different, “I’d pick more songs that people would recognize. I thought the African song we performed was kinda out there, and I saw some baffled faces in the audience during that song,” said Duke.

Even though she likes to mix it up, Gary said there are certain styles that should always be kept in the mix. “I’m always going to do “Carol of the Bells”, I’m always going to do a fun finale with music alive. There’s always going to be a couple traditional, like, Latin type things and there’s going to be something fun,” said Gary.

Duke said, “Ms. Gary picks a few songs, and sometimes asks the choir’s opinion on them. Usually, there seems to be one silly song, one more difficult song, and a few fun ones that people in the audience may recognize.”

And “Carol of the Bells”, the song where choir alumni are invited to the stage with current choir to sing, is one of those songs that many audience members recognize. In fact, parent Tammy Key, whose daughter is choir sophomore, Lauren Key, said it’s her favorite part of the entire concert. “The “Carol of the Bells” is just awesome. It (the holiday concert) was just as good as last year,” said Tammy.

Likewise, Gary loved “Carol of the Bells” because Madelyn Mann, one of her former students and now fellow teacher, was up there singing as an alumni. “That’s a great moment,” said Gary. But musically, “O Magnum Mysterium” was Gary’s favorite, “because that’s probably the hardest, most difficult piece of music, I’ve ever done.” She admitted that the piece wasn’t perfect, but advanced choir worked tremendously hard on it.

Overall, Gary and Duke alike felt the holiday concert was an overall success, “There was a huge crowd, I was happy with the big turnout. You know it’s never going to be perfect… it was good, they felt good about it. It was fun, we can learn from it,” said Gary.

Duke thought the concert was fun, and he’s satisfied with how their performance went, but he hopes they can “approach performing with more confidence” at the next one.