The choir is given a very limited amount of time to learn ten songs that will be performed at the Paul Shaghoian Theater located at Clovis North at 7:00 p.m., Jan. 18.
Ogdon sheds some light on the tasks of the honor choir, and the hard work that goes into the production.
“Honor choirs something that happens annually in our Fresno/Madera county area,” Ogdon said. “Each music teacher in the area gets the chance to select singers from his choir or ensembles that he feels are the best singers and puts them in, they don’t even have an audition. They essentially have 16 hours of rehearsal to memorize the music in about two days. They are bringing in a director from southern California to lead the high schools.”
Appreciating that the event is local this year, Ogdon is happy to participate with his students. Rounding up to about 250, students from both public and private schools go to perform.
“The rehearsals and the performance will be held at Clovis North High School, luckily this year it is local for us, in past years they have been much farther away,” Ogdon said. “There are probably around 250 that have been brought together from all the public and private schools in the area. We have 14 students participating in the honor choir from our school this year.”
Freshman, Katie Blankenship, expresses her excitement for the upcoming performance. She is also very grateful for being chosen as a part of the honor choir.
“I have been doing choir ever since I was ten, it has just been a fun thing to do at whatever school I’m at,” Blankenship said. “I’m really excited and I feel really honored that they chose me and I definitely wasn’t expecting to get chosen. I feel a little intimidated because everyone has been doing this for so long and I’m new to all of it. Some of the songs that we are doing are difficult, but I am really excited for the performance.”
Adam Loughney, ’14, was chosen for the first time this year, and found the honor choir was not exactly what he expected. Loughney was not too excited about the practices, but is looking forward to the performance.
“I have never been chosen for honor choir before so this is my first year participating,” Loughney said. “I was excited when I first got selected, but once I got to the practices and saw what honor choir really was, I realized that it was not my favorite thing. I’m looking forward to the performance, but I really don’t enjoy the practices. The songs are really strange and by strange composers, but learning the notes is really easy.”
The FC participants are as follows: Adam Loughney, Josh Carter, Andrew Guthrie, Robbie Hill, Dalton Cowin, Jon Ago, Shannon Martens, Summer Villanueba, Elise Winegarden, Katie Blankenship,Maddie Luginbill, Natalie Ruiz,Amanda Menes, Illeana See.
These writers can be reached via Twitter: @_sarapeterson @gaby_siqueiros. Follow The Feather via Twitter: @thefeather.
For more features, read the Jan. 16 article, Spanish Club focuses on community service.
