March 7, 2009
Some amazing music’
Elementary school choirs gear up to perform at festival
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Sacramento’s St. Mary School choir prepares for the 11th annual Diocesan Choral Festival. Music director Jean Davis conducts. Luis Gris Elizarrarás/Herald photo
After a collective intake of breath, 32 voices rise in unison from the children
standing in three rows before the piano. The choir director moves her hands
to keep time, dropping both hands down low to remind the children that the
melody drops down in the next phrase. Some of the children still sing notes
that ascend.
The director stops and laughs, releasing the children’s attention. The children chatter and wiggle for a few moments. Then the director collects their attention with a gesture, raises her hands, reminds them that the melody goes “up!” and starts the children singing again at the beginning of the difficult measure.
This is the first through eighth grade student choir of St. Mary School in Sacramento, practicing for the 11th annual Diocesan Choral Festival to be held on March 27 at Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento. Jean Davis, choir director at St. Mary School, has brought her choirs to the festival for the past eight years and is this year’s festival coordinator.
Preparing an elementary school choir to perform at the festival requires long-term commitment and hard work, both from the students and from their choir directors, Davis told The Herald. Still, she believes it’s a necessary commitment to make because music festivals are such important learning experiences for children.
“It’s not a competition, it’s a festival,” Davis said. The distinction is important. At festivals, she explained, musicians listen to and critique one another. And there are all kinds of festivals, she adds — choral festivals, band festivals, orchestra festivals. Musicians need to hear one another.
At the upcoming choral festival, Davis said, choirs from elementary schools across the diocese will perform their very best pieces. After each choir’s performance, judges will give the singers critical feedback, telling them what they did well, what needs work, and how to improve. While the judges are speaking, all of the other festival choirs will be listening and learning as well.
Participating at the festival broadens the students’ understanding of music, gives the students a performance goal, and allows them to more full develop their musicality, Davis noted.
“Singing in the choir is not like singing at a school Mass,” she said. Students spend months learning and practicing their parts in difficult, lengthy pieces of music. Although elementary school singers are not yet separated into tenors and basses, sopranos and altos, she said, the students do sing rounds and descant, or counter melody.
The young students not only memorize lyrics and melodies, they must also practice breathing techniques and master the art of singing one melody while simultaneously listening to someone else sing a different melody.
“There is some amazing music being made in our diocese,” Davis said.
The festival judges are always experienced choir directors at Catholic high schools in the diocese. This year the two judges will be Ron Slabbinck, director of visual and performing arts at Christian Brothers High School, and Anthony Lien, chair of the visual and performing arts department at Loretto High School in Sacramento.
Lien has been directing choirs since 1992. He holds a doctorate in musicology and specializes in composing, arranging and conducting choral music. This is his fourth year to judge the choral festival, he said, though he notes that he wouldn’t call it “judging.”
“The festival is more of a master class or workshop,” he said. “I’m a second voice, to give the students another teacher besides their choir director. I’m there to help the kids do their best at something they’re excited about.”
Lien said that singing in a choir is a great experience for children, teaching them poise and the confidence to stand up in front of people. But mainly, “it’s important to sing because without singing, we miss part of our humanity,” he said.
“People don’t sing anymore except at church, if they go to church, and maybe at the beginnings of ball games. And that’s just backward from the way it’s been for human beings for millennia,” he concluded.
Diocesan Choral Festival
The 11th annual Diocesan Choral Festival will be held on Friday, March 27 at Christian Brothers High School, located at 4315 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in Sacramento. Elementary school choirs will sing in the school gym in two sessions: a 9:30 a.m. session and an afternoon session beginning at 1:30 p.m. At least 15 choirs are expected to participate this year. Admission is free and the public is welcome. For more information, call Jean Davis at (916) 452-1100.
