Choir: a Sneak Peak into Their Upcoming Performance

Santa Barbara High School’s (SBHS) choir group has a performance on Dec. 19 in the Trinity Episcopal Church at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10. As they are carolling around the school and working on other activities, they are practicing and preparing.

One of the choir’s section leaders, junior Angie Valencia, is in charge of planning practices with the tenors of the choir. She remarks about the upcoming concert, “Come for the fun vibes and singing.” The choir will be performing Hanukkah songs, more classical traditional church songs, and more festive songs like “Frosty the Snowman”. 

The choir is also caroling for Christmas all around Santa Barbara. Sophomore Rylan Nelson, says, “We get hired to go outside of school and go to parties and events.” According to junior Camila Robles Quintero, an alto in the choir, the class usually spends around a month and a half to two months practicing every day in class for each performance. 

Once the concert gets closer, they have after-school rehearsals where they will perform inside Trinity to accommodate the acoustics and adjust their sound accordingly. Nelson says people should expect lots of cool harmonies and good songs picked out for their show, stating,“You should expect to be surprised.” Nelson also says they do lots of practicing in their sectionals, where each section that does a harmony works separately. This helps the choir improve on their respective musical role, so when they all perform together, they sound coherent and prepared. He thinks people should come to their performance because, “It’s an event and we’re raising money for the school. They should just support the arts, and also it’s gonna be fun.” Along with this, the hardest part of practicing, according to Nelson and Valencia, is memorising and learning your part. Valencia says, “If you don’t know your part, you’re fried because there’s no safety net to catch you.” Along with this, according to Valencia, they aren’t allowed to have the music sheets in front of them during performances, and they have to memorise every single song by a certain due date. Adding onto this, Nelson says, “The hardest part is working it over and over, ” 

Come to the winter choir showcase to support fellow SBHS students. Robles Quintero says, “it’s important to show up and support your fellow classmates, for us this is like our sport, and this is our competition.”