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Updates from Upperclassmen by Michael Olson and Henry Buendorf

Albert Lea High School’s Concert Choir students had the opportunity to sing at the Minnesota Music Educators Association on Feb. 16 in Minneapolis. The Concert Choir is a mix of students in grades 10-12. This association puts on a conference every February where only a limited number of choirs get the honor to go and sing at this special event, and the ALHS Concert Choir was selected to sing!

Concert Choir director Diane Heaney takes much pride and works very hard to make her choirs as successful as they can be. Heaney also tries to give her students many opportunities and the best exposure so they can show their hard work to as many people as possible. To get selected for this event, Heaney had to send in tapes of our choir from past performances into the committee. Our choir was grateful to be selected to represent at this event. Since we were selected, we worked harder than ever to make sure we perfected our music and could present our best singing to the audience.

As a choir, we selected the theme of our concert as “Who are we, and who do we want to be?” Our songs include “It Takes a Whole Village” by Joan Szymko; “Verleih uns Frieden” by Felix Mendelssohn; “Not in Our Town” by Fred Small; “Can we Sing the Darkness to Light” by Kyle Pederson; “Es Tu Tiempo” by Francisco Nunez; and “North” by Ryan O’Neal. We believe these songs were very moving for our audience. In choir class, we wrote what each of our songs mean to us, and throughout our presentation of our music, some of those answers were presented to the crowd as a way to express what we think about while singing those songs.

The community was able to see the performance, and we are grateful for those who came out to support us. We will have our next concert in Albert Lea at the ALHS auditorium at 7 p.m. March 6 if you cannot make it to the MMEA performance in Minneapolis.

Henry Buendorf and Michael Olson are juniors at Albert Lea High School.