The high school, middle school and sixth grade choirs will join to perform their 10th anniversary fall preview tomorrow at 6:30 p.m.
“It’s gonna be a celebration of the 10 years of seeing growth and of welcoming everybody to choir,” choir teacher Evan Ramos said.
The concert will feature popular songs such as Wannabe by Spice Girls and Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood.
“If all I did was Mozart and Beethoven, not all my students can individually connect with that,” Ramos said.
The performance will also feature an Indian folk song, Garbe Rame by Sheena Philliips.
“I have a number of students who can help me with that genre of music and introduce everybody to something that maybe we don’t program on Western consciousness,” Ramos said. “We’re not just here to celebrate one style of music. We’re here to enjoy music.”
Ramos hopes the concert will convince younger students to continue with choir in high school.
“I have found that my students do the best at recruiting,” Ramos said. “I’ve had some [students] come up to me and say they wanted to be in this group since fifth grade, which is really cool.”
Junior and choir officer Vyuha Allamaraju performed at a similar concert when she was in eighth grade.
“That was the first time I connected with a lot of people,” Allamarajun said. “There were a lot of nice people that mentored me through the choir program. It feels like a big family.”
Ramos and middle school choir teacher Diana Taylor work closely to make a unified curriculum.
“It makes the students feel more confident once they move up to the high school,” Ramos said. “[Taylor] loves those kids and it’s been really cool to see the full depth of what she’s done.”
The concert will end with Dry Your Tears, Afrika by John Williams. The song will be sung by every member of the choir program from the sixth grade center through the high school.
“There’s going to be a ton of people singing due to the huge influx that we got going into choir,” junior and soprano choir officer Vivienne Bolanos said. “We just exploded from the span of the year, which is amazing but it’s also nerve wracking.”
In 2015, the choir program had 11 students. This year, the program has over 300 students.
“It just took a lot of people realizing that singing is fun,” Ramos said. “Now that we’ve been here for 10 years, Argyle is recognizing that we do have a choir program that’s really good. They’re starting to see that there’s some really cool things that are going on over here.”
