Manitou Springs High School hosted two concerts this October. The Advanced Orchestra played on Oct.14 and the Chamber Choir concert was on Oct.15. The Advanced Orchestra directed by David Williams played a Halloween concert at the SILC building and the Choir concert directed by Abby Steen performed at the MSES Auditorium.
This is the Advanced Orchestra’s second year of performing a Halloween concert. They played five songs including, “This Is Halloween”, “Mysteria Abyssi”, “Midnight at the Mausoleum”, “Graveyard Shift” and “Thriller”.
There is no intent in the future to add more than four songs. “It’s such a short amount of time to rehearse in class and the ability to level would have to go lower,” Williams said. “And I want to make sure that we’re still challenging ourselves.”
At the Halloween concert there was candy, cookies and decorations. “I like the atmosphere and the space that we used. The amphitheater is really fun and I liked that everybody dressed up in costumes,” Williams said.
Mackinzy Wall, a senior at MSHS has been in orchestra for six years playing the bass. “I think the Halloween concert is really fun. It’s definitely meant for an advanced class because it takes a lot of time to prepare the songs,” Wall said. “But we didn’t have that full time, so it really kept us on our toes.”
Katherine Hanchey (10) plays the cello and this is her first concert in Advanced Orchestra. “My favorite part about the orchestra concert was probably the decorations and the costumes,” Hanchey said. “I also really liked the song selections that we played.”
Wall would put in extra work outside of the class to better prepare herself for the concert. “I would come in sometimes during advisory, lunch or after school to work on scales or work any of the pieces,” Wall said. “I brought my bass and my electric bass home a couple times to work on it.”
According to Williams, if he could change anything, he would make the advertising better for the concert so that more people would come. “Come check it out, we usually have treats and candy,” Williams said. “It’s a fun Halloween atmosphere in the middle of October to get everybody kind of excited for the spooky season.”
The choir concert was a collaboration with the Colorado Repertory Singers. They sang a total of 11 songs. The students sang two with the Colorado Repertory singers and one alone, while the Colorado Repertory singers sang eight alone. A few of the songs included “Apple Cider Wassail” by Jacob Narverud, “Sure on this Shining Night” by Morten Laurisden and “Spirit” from Disney’s “The Lion King”.
The concert returned this October after a few years of not doing it because it’s close to the time of the December concert. “I found that we were not very prepared by the time we got to our December concert because we were so focused on that October concert that we had to rush through to learn new music so we kind of put a stop to the October concerts for a while,” Steen said, “until we did this collaboration with the Colorado repertory singers.”
The reason this choir concert came to be was because Kyle Fleming, an Artistic Director for the Colorado Repertory Singers, frequently tries to work with different ensembles to improve the music education in communities. “I met the director of the Colorado Repertory Singers at an honor choir maybe two years ago, and we really just hit it off, and we started talking about choir things and teaching things,” Steen said. “And he contacted me this summer and said we do a series of collaborative concerts with different community choirs and school choirs. And he said, ‘I think it would be awesome if you got to work with some of your singers.’”
Scarlett Huffman, a sophomore at MSHS, has been in choir for five years. She was selected for a solo part in the song “Spirit” from Disney’s “The Lion King”. “It was a good performance. There were little things that we could have fixed up a bit, but within the time constraints we were given I think we did a good job,” Huffman said.
Abby Steen would encourage the MSHS students to come to the concert because they have the opportunity to hear both high school and community groups with high level work. “Choral music can be really fun and unique,” Steen said. “It’s not as boring as people might think, but they can really enjoy themselves at a concert, and an event like that.”
