The Foothills School Division Elementary Music Teachers have the opportunity to meet on Specialist PD days to share songs, create UBD’s for melody, rhythm, playing instruments, singing in-tune, or composing songs and plan PD activities that address our music curriculum.
One PD opportunity that helps our student singers and allows us, (as teachers) to grow is through our work in creating a Choral Fest. This year would be our 3rd Choral Fest for our choirs and we are showcasing 5 Elementary School Choirs. We follow the standards and definition of “choral fest;” which are celebrated around the world. A choral fest is a non-competitive festival for choirs. Choirs participate in an adjudicated on-stage performance; each Foothills Choir prepared two choral pieces that were categorized in the Alberta Music Festival Association Syllabus as either “Contemporary-Modern composer” or “Traditional Folk/Sea Shanty/Spiritual.” The day is filled with off-stage workshops, where the choirs work with an adjudicator on singing in-tune, vowel formation, diction, or breathing. Choirs have an opportunity to listen to other choirs and learn from these performances and adjudications of each of the choirs. The adjudicator also teaches each choir a song that the choirs will continue to work on throughout the rest of the school year. Since this is a workshop for almost 300 students, our space is reserved for students, parent chaperones and teachers; therefore we have not opened this up to the public.
This year, our Choralfest is being hosted by Joe Clark School. We will perform in the church next door to Joe Clark; High River Alliance Church. This is the first year we are holding the choralfest in High River as our past performances have been held in Okotoks at the United Church.
We are excited to have Tim Korthuis as our adjudicator. Tim received his masters in choral conducting from the University of Calgary in 2014. Tim is well known in our community as he is the conductor for the Foothills Philharmonic Chorus and the Okotoks Men’s Chorus; Tim is the accompanist for The Big Rock Singers and Dr. Gibson School Choir. At Dr. Gibson, our students love working with Tim during concerts and we can’t wait to share his enthusiasm and love of singing with all the young musicians and music teachers.
The following school choirs will be performing in the Foothills School Choralfest 2015:
* Joe Clark
*Spitzee School Choir
* C. Ian McLaren School Choir
* Big Rock School Choir
* Dr. Gibson School Choir
Please join us in celebrating our young musicians at the Foothills School Division Choralfest 2015 on March 10, 2015. We will start singing at 9:30 am in the High River Alliance Church (the building east of Joe Clark) where all the school choirs will perform together. We will work throughout the morning, break for lunch and continue in the afternoon until 2:30 pm.