What Has Changed After a Year Of Virtual Choir?

Dung Tran

With last year being mostly spent virtually, holding choir concerts proved to be struggle. The two concerts held were virtual or performed socially distanced which came with its own challenges. I caught up with choir teachers and a student to see how last year was and what has changed going into this year!  

Mr. Cox summed up the entire year describing it as strange. As one of the concert directors and the boy’s choir teacher Mr. Cox put it, “We went through a lot of different phases like others classroom, with our first concert being totally virtual, where the students would submit their vocal recording and we would mix them together, and adding visual pieces to the vocal recordings of each song. So sometimes the student would have artworks and/or videos.”

With school now being back too in-person full time, concerts can be held in person again! This means that they can be held in the auditorium, similar to how it was pre-pandemic. As Lotti Peterson, a senior noted, “This year was definitely a rebuilding year since everyone was not practicing and learning music in person, which is really difficult but it has been awesome to learn and grow together as a choir.

However, being back to in-person learning doesn’t mean the preparation for the concert is always smooth sailing. Mrs. Cherner, the girl’s choir teacher, explained, “We’re are all out of practices, the audience is out of practice for being audience members, singers haven’t been practicing in person, so it sometimes can be really difficult to remember how to act in a concert.”

As the year goes on, many students in choir worry that they may have to go back to last year’s situation due to the rise in Covid cases. However, both students and the concert directors have learned much regarding how to put together an awesome and enjoyable show for both audiences and student alike.