The heavenly sound of music fills the air as a group of 19 campus students lift up their voices in song. Dressed in tuxes and long dresses, ensemble travels all over the Valley and sometimes even out of it, performing.

Especially during the Christmas season ensemble is exceedingly busy. Performances at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum and the Insurance Underwriters Luncheon preceded Christmas vacation, while a trip to San Francisco, highlighted by performances at the St. Francis and Hilton Hotels in Union Square, run through the beginning of vacation.

The annual campus Christmas concert, held on Dec.10 at Community Bible Church, gave ensemble a chance to display their talents to family and friends through song.

“Ensemble really sang well and nailed their songs at the Christmas Concert,” choir and ensemble director, Marc Ferguson, said. “We were able to perform to a good sized crowd, and I feel that the Christmas spirit was really present. I think that God was glorified through our singing.”

While ensemble performs to entertain others and brings home awards in competition, Ferguson states that the real mission of ensemble is to have a ministry for God through song.

“Though we do sing in competitions and we have quite a few concerts for entertainment, our main goal is to glorify God with our singing and minister to others through our songs,” Ferguson said.

While ensemble members are also members of the choir, not all choir members belong to the ensemble. Try-outs are held to determine who will make up the smaller and more select ensemble. Many younger members of the choir aspire to be an ensemble member when they are older and more experienced.

“I’d really like to be in ensemble,” Whitney Ensom, ’05, said. “You get to do more performances and the songs ensemble sing are more exciting and complex than the songs the regular choir sings.”

Ensemble was created to give students who love to sing and are advanced musically a chance to sing with a more select group, where their skills can grow be fine-tuned. Having a smaller choral group also makes travel easier and allows for more advanced music to be sung.

The next ensemble activity is a retreat up to Shaver Lake in January. Their next performance will be at the annual spaghetti dinner and fundraiser in February on a date yet to be announced.

The ensemble is currently performing in San Francisco through Dec. 14.