Choir Festival

What a weekend! This weekend we spent Friday and Saturday in Salt Lake as part of the Utah Children's Choir 25th anniversary celebration. The UCC decided to celebrate by holding a choir festival and hosting 4 other choirs from around the state. The choirs included Cache Children's Cantate and Concert Choirs, American Fork Children's Choir, and the Hobble Creek Singers of Springville, Utah.

{Cache Children's Concert Choir
Top row: Amanda Bjarnson (Student Director), Samantha Jensen, Molly Claire, Jared Higham, Ethan May, Celestra Anderson, Emma Fjeldsted, Laney Jensen, Kayla Woodbrey, Sherida Wing, Melody Francis (Director)
Middle Row: Elise Idso, Lillie Clawson, Emma Cardon, Abigail Johnson, Brooke Taylor, Robyn Woodbrey, Abby Taylor, Madison Beck, Bryson Hackler
Bottom area: Jack Salmond, Jesse Moore, Zachary Butler, Daniel Francis, Jeremy Hardman, Owen Sidwell, Hunter Franks, and Hayden Hackler}

{An intense schedule!}

If you thought your weekend was busy, I don't think you had anything on the children that participated in this festival! They literally had almost nonstop rehearsals Friday and Saturday culminating in a concert on Saturday afternoon at 4pm.

{Celestra at rehearsals on Friday}

{a group of kids from CCC, including Celestra, at Friday's rehearsals}

As part of the festival, the UCC invited a guest conductor to conduct four joint numbers between all five of the participating choirs. The directors name was Iris Lamanna. I don't really think she was very good for the younger children though. She was too harsh with them. She was fine for the older ones but I think she has forgotten what it takes to work with younger children. All in all though, everything turned out great and the kids did a wonderful job.

{The guest conductor: Iris Lamanna}

One of the really neat things they got to do was perform a special number composed just for this festival by a local composer by the name of Nathan Hofheins. The peice is called "To This Day". It is a beautiful piece but is quite challenging. I think the kids really liked it though. Along with that piece they also performed three other numbers including a Japanese lullaby in Japanese. This was, of course, Celestra's favorite piece. I just wish they had done a better job with pronunciation. Oh well, you can't have everything.

{The kids rehearsing "To This Day"}

We also got to spend the night at the Crystal Inn in downtown Salt Lake. Celestra and I had two of her choirmates as roommates for the night. The girls were Emma Cardon and Elise Idso. Two very cute little girls. The girls had a good time together but were exhausted after a long day of rehearsal and crashed rather quickly after getting to the hotel.

{Celestra and Elise Idso in the hotel room: both girls had to have their stuffed animals}

Of course some down time was needed so during the meal breaks both days the kids did quite a bit of goofing off and relaxing. And man did they let loose! I think there was a lot of pent up energy going around. Those kids were starving and they just about went completely wild on us!

{Concert Choir kids playing a game}

{Just Chillaxing}

{A good opportunity for some Nintendo DS}

Everything culminated in a beautiful concert on Saturday afternoon at 4pm. Each of the choirs performed their own numbers and then all combined for the final four pieces. The kids did a great job and it was a beautiful concert.

{Elise Idso right before the concert.
Cele was avoiding the camera so I took a picture of her roommate}