Post by slt on Apr 20, 2010 13:29:27 GMT -5
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-live-0420-show-choir-20100420,0,5656730.column
Show choir means much more than sequins and jazz hands at top competitor high school
Steve Johnson Tribune reporter
April 20, 2010
The high school cafeteria at night is a lonely place. The tables are put away, and with them the scents and sounds of the day. There is almost no light illuminating the tile floor and low ceiling.
Then, at this particular cafeteria at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, on this particular Monday, a piano is rolled in. About 50 students drift in from the chorus room down the hall. Most of the boys are wearing bright green T-shirts, most of the girls purple. Somebody finds the lights.
First, as the room is readied, they practice the dance steps alone, boys in one group, girls in the other. You hear the breathing and grunting that a full production normally masks, a reminder that, despite the smiling faces and fluid movements, this is hard work.
Then choral director Mark Myers starts to play the piano and, suddenly, this drab, institutional space comes alive. Fifty voices join as one. Fifty dancers weave in and out of one another, turning a song — Michael Jackson's "Black or White" — into a show.
This is Sound Check, the show choir at Waubonsie Valley and one of the best in the nation.
Even in rehearsal, even as some of the dancing leads to involuntary bumps, the performance borders on stunning. What looks like an ordinary cross section of high school kids — pimples, pep and lots of bangs threatening the eyes — becomes something polished, almost professional.
Close your eyes and you're listening to a recording. Open them, and you're wondering how an ordinary school district in an ordinary suburb develops the talent to do this, especially when, five years ago, Waubonsie Valley didn't even have a show choir.
Thanks to television, people are paying attention to show choirs again after some in the music business thought the groups might be fading. "High School Musical" helped by highlighting singing and dancing in a high school setting. Even more on point, the Fox series "Glee" (Tuesdays, 8 p.m.) is specifically about a show choir, informed by co-creator Ian Brennan's experiences at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect.
Watch it, and you'll learn some truths about show choir, which is to regular choir what a show horse is to a horse. They do have names like "Vocal Adrenaline" (Swingsation, Elite Energy and In Sync are some actual top-rated choirs). They do perform perky versions of popular songs. And on last week's " Glee," a choir director hit another truth, telling her charges not to forget their "show face" as they perform, an almost manic expression of tooth-baring delight.
"You want to look so talented, it's literally hurting you," the character said. "I want a look that's so optimistic, it could cure cancer."
But it is television, so there are myths and exaggerations. None of the Sound Check kids has ever had a slushie thrown in his face for being uncool. None has been forced by a coach to choose between football and show choir. And there isn't, at Waubonsie Valley, a bitter rivalry between the cheerleading coach and Sound Check's director.
Most important, a real show choir doesn't learn a song by experiencing a complicated emotion and suddenly launching into a finely honed version of a pop song that amplifies that emotion, complete with backing parts and dance steps.
Still, "we're all ‘Gleeks.' We all love ‘Glee,'" says Dylan Rowsey, one of three Sound Check seniors who will go on to study at Belmont University in Nashville, a school that has a show choir, and one of the few with a commercial music program.
"Glee" is an unavoidable influence. When I first visited a rehearsal, Sound Check was in the middle of a full-out version of "Don't Stop Believin'," the Journey tune revitalized on "Glee." Myers' choir won't perform it in competition, in part because so many are, but it's a fun piece, he says, for school and community concerts.
Still, the presence and popularity of "Glee" hasn't led to instant understanding of what show choir is all about.
"Many people think we are just show tunes and jazz hands, but that is not the case," says Shelby Bias, a senior and third-year member of Sound Check. "It takes an incredible amount of dedication to be in show choir, and sometimes you are asked to give up certain luxuries, like sleeping in on a Saturday morning or dying your hair that crazy color you wanted to."
Myers, 31, says they practice a lot, but not as much as some choirs: three hours weekly, at night, six hours during competition season. As the activity has developed — mostly in the Midwest, although it's spreading — some schools have made show choir part of their music curricula. At Waubonsie, though, it's an extracurricular, one of nine choirs the music department runs. If you've bought mulch from a high school kid in the area, you've probably helped support the WV music department.
Principal Kristine Marchiando was heading to San Diego on vacation for spring break. Inside Midway Airport, she says, she heard singing, loud and quite good, and instantly knew that it was one of her school's choirs, which also was traveling west.
The school was named one of the best for music in the country in 2007 by the Grammy Foundation. Although there is no show choir national championship, the well-regarded Web site Show Choir Rating System, using performances in regional competitions and expert polling as a guide, ranked Sound Check tops in the nation in 2009, No. 2 in 2010.
All of this eats up hours, to the point that finding a block of unscheduled time with Myers is a challenge: To do a full interview, he suggests a long car ride he has to make. On a Friday in March, he gets in his car after school and drives four hours to LaCrosse, Wis., to judge a weekend show choir competition there and give clinics for the kids.
This is, clearly, a labor of love. Myers — who says he has traveled to New York to buy Sound Check costumes cheaper than he could get them from Aurora — went to high school in Indiana, ground zero for show choirs. ("Glee" has made reference to the long-powerful Ambassadors choir at Carmel High School, in the tony north suburbs of Indianapolis, currently ranked No. 13 by Show Choir Rating System.)
Even in high school, Myers was arranging songs for his choir, playing piano for others and working on choreography. Graduating high school in Waterloo, Ind., in 1997, he picked North Central College in Naperville, largely because of the show choir there run by Dwight Jordan, a legend in the show choir world.
After teaching and working with choirs for two years in the city, Myers got the job in 2003 at Waubonsie, a giant regional high school that draws from Aurora and Naperville.
Starting the school's show choir, he says, was always his plan, largely a matter of building on a base established by the school's "swing choir," a kind of precursor to today's show choirs.
"Part of going into teaching in the first place was wanting to create moments that I valued so much," says Myers. He values show choir because "it's a unique combination of music and dance and visuals."
Although Myers doesn't tolerate fooling around in rehearsals, his philosophy seems remarkably democratic. Kids audition for vocal solos, rather than having them assigned. In talking with his charges about a huge regional competition they won in March, beating schools including Carmel, he emphasizes the camaraderie and the way all the schools at the competition seemed to be cheering for one another.
"I can't say I've ever seen the top three groups at a competition hug each other," he says, adding that this event, held in Wheaton, was "probably the most competitive this group has ever been to."
They're back in the choir room now, the singers in tiers before Myers, who is down at the front of the room at another piano. The snack at this first practice after the competition is a pair of giant chocolate chip cookies given to them by the Buffalo Grove show choir (ranked No. 22). Written in frosting is this message: "Expressions (Hearts) Sound Check."
"We were all so happy for each other," says Amy Pfluger, a soloist in Sound Check who will attend Belmont University. "It was just joy."
One singer reports that his dad has become a bit of a Gleek himself. "On your ballad," Andy Dahn says his dad told him, "I felt like my chair was floating to the ceiling."
While they eat their cookies, Myers plays back a recording of comments a judge made on Sound Check's performance of "Black or White."
"A little confused in the tonal center there for a second. … Now I get it, now that the band's back in," the judge says. Then he addresses the all-important facial expression: "Is this a joyous celebration face? Is this an intense questioning face? I just see a mix."
Then: "Sell it, girls! Come on!"
At a school performance in late March, Sound Check is set to sing a couple of tunes, part of the wind-down to the year. Auditions for next year are in May, but the competition season is over.
Waiting in the wings backstage, they're donning lime-green suits (boys) and purple sequined dresses (girls).
The performers are animated as they chat, in hushed tones, about which way they should move the risers on which they perform after they finish (stage right) and where they might eat after (pizza or Jimmy John's). Rowsey reminds them to stay calm: "We've all done this enough," he says.
And then, the show. U2's Martin Luther King opus, "(Pride) In the Name of Love," done in a more gospel-choir-style than the original, leads into the charged "Black or White." The onstage effect is of a highly organized dance party. The applause is long and loud.
When they come off stage, breathing hard, glistening with sweat, one is reminded of the professional singers who, feebly, use the demands of their in-concert choreography as an excuse to avoid live singing.
Rowsey, who has won honors as a soloist, is happy with the performance. It wasn't a competition, but Myers, he says, has taught them to "perform your best, no matter where you perform."
He's taught them something else, as well. Rowsey would love to perform professionally, of course, he says. But through being in Sound Check, and in talking with Myers, he's also become interested in teaching.
"I'd love to be a show choir director," he says.
sajohnson@tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-100419-glee-show-choir-pictures,0,6429798.photogallery
Show choir means much more than sequins and jazz hands at top competitor high school
Steve Johnson Tribune reporter
April 20, 2010
The high school cafeteria at night is a lonely place. The tables are put away, and with them the scents and sounds of the day. There is almost no light illuminating the tile floor and low ceiling.
Then, at this particular cafeteria at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, on this particular Monday, a piano is rolled in. About 50 students drift in from the chorus room down the hall. Most of the boys are wearing bright green T-shirts, most of the girls purple. Somebody finds the lights.
First, as the room is readied, they practice the dance steps alone, boys in one group, girls in the other. You hear the breathing and grunting that a full production normally masks, a reminder that, despite the smiling faces and fluid movements, this is hard work.
Then choral director Mark Myers starts to play the piano and, suddenly, this drab, institutional space comes alive. Fifty voices join as one. Fifty dancers weave in and out of one another, turning a song — Michael Jackson's "Black or White" — into a show.
This is Sound Check, the show choir at Waubonsie Valley and one of the best in the nation.
Even in rehearsal, even as some of the dancing leads to involuntary bumps, the performance borders on stunning. What looks like an ordinary cross section of high school kids — pimples, pep and lots of bangs threatening the eyes — becomes something polished, almost professional.
Close your eyes and you're listening to a recording. Open them, and you're wondering how an ordinary school district in an ordinary suburb develops the talent to do this, especially when, five years ago, Waubonsie Valley didn't even have a show choir.
Thanks to television, people are paying attention to show choirs again after some in the music business thought the groups might be fading. "High School Musical" helped by highlighting singing and dancing in a high school setting. Even more on point, the Fox series "Glee" (Tuesdays, 8 p.m.) is specifically about a show choir, informed by co-creator Ian Brennan's experiences at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect.
Watch it, and you'll learn some truths about show choir, which is to regular choir what a show horse is to a horse. They do have names like "Vocal Adrenaline" (Swingsation, Elite Energy and In Sync are some actual top-rated choirs). They do perform perky versions of popular songs. And on last week's " Glee," a choir director hit another truth, telling her charges not to forget their "show face" as they perform, an almost manic expression of tooth-baring delight.
"You want to look so talented, it's literally hurting you," the character said. "I want a look that's so optimistic, it could cure cancer."
But it is television, so there are myths and exaggerations. None of the Sound Check kids has ever had a slushie thrown in his face for being uncool. None has been forced by a coach to choose between football and show choir. And there isn't, at Waubonsie Valley, a bitter rivalry between the cheerleading coach and Sound Check's director.
Most important, a real show choir doesn't learn a song by experiencing a complicated emotion and suddenly launching into a finely honed version of a pop song that amplifies that emotion, complete with backing parts and dance steps.
Still, "we're all ‘Gleeks.' We all love ‘Glee,'" says Dylan Rowsey, one of three Sound Check seniors who will go on to study at Belmont University in Nashville, a school that has a show choir, and one of the few with a commercial music program.
"Glee" is an unavoidable influence. When I first visited a rehearsal, Sound Check was in the middle of a full-out version of "Don't Stop Believin'," the Journey tune revitalized on "Glee." Myers' choir won't perform it in competition, in part because so many are, but it's a fun piece, he says, for school and community concerts.
Still, the presence and popularity of "Glee" hasn't led to instant understanding of what show choir is all about.
"Many people think we are just show tunes and jazz hands, but that is not the case," says Shelby Bias, a senior and third-year member of Sound Check. "It takes an incredible amount of dedication to be in show choir, and sometimes you are asked to give up certain luxuries, like sleeping in on a Saturday morning or dying your hair that crazy color you wanted to."
Myers, 31, says they practice a lot, but not as much as some choirs: three hours weekly, at night, six hours during competition season. As the activity has developed — mostly in the Midwest, although it's spreading — some schools have made show choir part of their music curricula. At Waubonsie, though, it's an extracurricular, one of nine choirs the music department runs. If you've bought mulch from a high school kid in the area, you've probably helped support the WV music department.
Principal Kristine Marchiando was heading to San Diego on vacation for spring break. Inside Midway Airport, she says, she heard singing, loud and quite good, and instantly knew that it was one of her school's choirs, which also was traveling west.
The school was named one of the best for music in the country in 2007 by the Grammy Foundation. Although there is no show choir national championship, the well-regarded Web site Show Choir Rating System, using performances in regional competitions and expert polling as a guide, ranked Sound Check tops in the nation in 2009, No. 2 in 2010.
All of this eats up hours, to the point that finding a block of unscheduled time with Myers is a challenge: To do a full interview, he suggests a long car ride he has to make. On a Friday in March, he gets in his car after school and drives four hours to LaCrosse, Wis., to judge a weekend show choir competition there and give clinics for the kids.
This is, clearly, a labor of love. Myers — who says he has traveled to New York to buy Sound Check costumes cheaper than he could get them from Aurora — went to high school in Indiana, ground zero for show choirs. ("Glee" has made reference to the long-powerful Ambassadors choir at Carmel High School, in the tony north suburbs of Indianapolis, currently ranked No. 13 by Show Choir Rating System.)
Even in high school, Myers was arranging songs for his choir, playing piano for others and working on choreography. Graduating high school in Waterloo, Ind., in 1997, he picked North Central College in Naperville, largely because of the show choir there run by Dwight Jordan, a legend in the show choir world.
After teaching and working with choirs for two years in the city, Myers got the job in 2003 at Waubonsie, a giant regional high school that draws from Aurora and Naperville.
Starting the school's show choir, he says, was always his plan, largely a matter of building on a base established by the school's "swing choir," a kind of precursor to today's show choirs.
"Part of going into teaching in the first place was wanting to create moments that I valued so much," says Myers. He values show choir because "it's a unique combination of music and dance and visuals."
Although Myers doesn't tolerate fooling around in rehearsals, his philosophy seems remarkably democratic. Kids audition for vocal solos, rather than having them assigned. In talking with his charges about a huge regional competition they won in March, beating schools including Carmel, he emphasizes the camaraderie and the way all the schools at the competition seemed to be cheering for one another.
"I can't say I've ever seen the top three groups at a competition hug each other," he says, adding that this event, held in Wheaton, was "probably the most competitive this group has ever been to."
They're back in the choir room now, the singers in tiers before Myers, who is down at the front of the room at another piano. The snack at this first practice after the competition is a pair of giant chocolate chip cookies given to them by the Buffalo Grove show choir (ranked No. 22). Written in frosting is this message: "Expressions (Hearts) Sound Check."
"We were all so happy for each other," says Amy Pfluger, a soloist in Sound Check who will attend Belmont University. "It was just joy."
One singer reports that his dad has become a bit of a Gleek himself. "On your ballad," Andy Dahn says his dad told him, "I felt like my chair was floating to the ceiling."
While they eat their cookies, Myers plays back a recording of comments a judge made on Sound Check's performance of "Black or White."
"A little confused in the tonal center there for a second. … Now I get it, now that the band's back in," the judge says. Then he addresses the all-important facial expression: "Is this a joyous celebration face? Is this an intense questioning face? I just see a mix."
Then: "Sell it, girls! Come on!"
At a school performance in late March, Sound Check is set to sing a couple of tunes, part of the wind-down to the year. Auditions for next year are in May, but the competition season is over.
Waiting in the wings backstage, they're donning lime-green suits (boys) and purple sequined dresses (girls).
The performers are animated as they chat, in hushed tones, about which way they should move the risers on which they perform after they finish (stage right) and where they might eat after (pizza or Jimmy John's). Rowsey reminds them to stay calm: "We've all done this enough," he says.
And then, the show. U2's Martin Luther King opus, "(Pride) In the Name of Love," done in a more gospel-choir-style than the original, leads into the charged "Black or White." The onstage effect is of a highly organized dance party. The applause is long and loud.
When they come off stage, breathing hard, glistening with sweat, one is reminded of the professional singers who, feebly, use the demands of their in-concert choreography as an excuse to avoid live singing.
Rowsey, who has won honors as a soloist, is happy with the performance. It wasn't a competition, but Myers, he says, has taught them to "perform your best, no matter where you perform."
He's taught them something else, as well. Rowsey would love to perform professionally, of course, he says. But through being in Sound Check, and in talking with Myers, he's also become interested in teaching.
"I'd love to be a show choir director," he says.
sajohnson@tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-100419-glee-show-choir-pictures,0,6429798.photogallery