Choral Trip :::
LTHS choral trip provides top notch clinics, acoustics
For the first time in recent Lyons Township High School history, 190 students from all six curricular choirs spent two days in choral clinics and singing in venues with incredible acoustics.
LT’s entire choral program recently descended on Millikin University in Decatur for an LT Choir Day. Millikin’s Director of Choral Activities Dr. Brad Holmes arranged an entire day of choral activities on campus, allowing LT students to experience what some college students may experience on a typical day. He created a schedule for each choir, including conducting classes, clinics with the Millikin choral staff, observing rehearsals of the University Choir and the Chamber Singers, a performance of scenes from Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte set cleverly in a modern-day situation and up-to-date English, master classes for soloists from each class with three Millikin voice professors, and a final performance featuring LT’s North Campus choirs with the Millikin Men's and Women's Choirs.
The following day, the choirs presented a concert in the Illinois Capitol Rotunda. The dome, completed in 1888, is the tallest capitol dome in the United States, provided an incredible reverberant acoustic, taking at least eight seconds for the sound to die out at the end of a song. LTHS choir teacher Connie Lyda says, “Hearing themselves in the acoustic was a powerful reward for our choirs – one they won’t soon forget.”
From Springfield, LT choirs continued on to Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago. LT choirs were treated to a clinic by U. of C. Director of Choral Activities Dr. James Kallembach. Lyda added, “The opportunity to sing in such unbelievably beautiful surroundings and hear the sound resonate throughout the wood and stone structure was a delight for the choirs and their visiting families.”
In just a mere 36 hours, LT singers were provided with a fieldtrip of a lifetime. Lyda said, “ Our choirs are fortunate be exposed to incredibly beautiful spaces for making music with some of the most talented and passionate choral educators in the country.”
The tour concluded with LT students dominating the audience and audience participation portion of the late-night Blue Man Group show (paid for by students). LT students were featured as part of the show as the latecomers, the body painting subject, the candy-thrower, and LT’s own choir teacher Rebecca Elpus was the attendant on the 15-minute Twinkie dinner segment.