On December 13th the Seymour High School Choirs performed their Sounds of the Seasons Winter Concert at the Earl D. Prout auditorium. The choirs had a previous performance in October, “Around the World in Less than 80 Minutes”, but as soon as it was over they started to prepare for the Christmas season. The performance started at 7:00 pm, and it started with Colla Voce. Colla Voce is the beginning women’s choir. Colla Voce students takes their choir class 4th or 8th period on white days. It’s a combined class because the choir is so large. They performed two songs “Winter’s Song” by Audrey Snyder and “No Golden Carriage, No Bright Toy” by Gilbert M. Martin.

Songs were played between groups to provide set up.  After Colla Voce was done with their two songs, Senior Kaylyn Stidham sang “Christmas in Heaven”.

The next group up was the Men’s Choir with the songs “Noel, Sing We Noel!” by Thomas Juneau and “Personent Hodie” by Ruth Elaine Schram. Next, the Groovy Shutters (a small group of nine students) performed “White Winter Hymnal” keeping the beat with their hands and feet.

Intermediate SAB (Soprano Alto Baritone) was next with “When I Hear Those Jingle Bells” by Douglas E. Wagner and “Carol of Winter Peace” also arranged by Wagner. Intermediate is a mixed choir of males and females with about thirty students in all. After that was Chamber Choir, a small extracurricular audition choir with the songs “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” arranged by Jeff Funk and “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” by Michael Praetorius. Chamber Choir sometimes has practices during power hour to further practice their songs and vocal skills.

The advanced women’s choir “Sirenas” performed “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella” a traditional French carol, arranged Julie Ann Ballard with Chloe Baker on the flute. Junior Grace Beach loved performing the French carol and stated “It was just fun. It was fast paced and there was so much going on!”

“Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Ruth Artman and then “The Christmas Song” arranged by Roy Ringwald with soloist Lacie Teesdale were the next performances.

While the next group got prepared, soloist Isaiah Fontanez sung “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

Show Chorale was next up with three songs; “Bethlehem Spiritual” by Donald Moore, a song with a lot of different parts and movement in it. “Still, Still, Still” by Norman Luboff, a soft, quiet song and then to go out with a bang they sung “Deck the Halls” arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw, a song with a lot of energy and voice.
Senior Morgan Boas sung the last solo with “Angels We Have Heard on High” and then, the grand finale, all the groups together. All the groups went off the stage and surrounded the audience to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” to close off the concert.

Choral director Kyle Karum thought that each group did very well. He commented that the “White Winter Hymnal” is a difficult song but he loved how the students performed it. Karum had the idea of putting all the groups together at the end of the concert and said, “We’ll do this every year as long as I’m the director”.