The Advanced Men’s Choir at Vallivue High School was invited to perform at the Idaho All-State Choir on February 2, which is run through the Idaho Music Educators Association and hosted at Northwest Nazarene University. All-State is an honor to perform at, consisting of only the best choir groups across Idaho being invited to perform. According to those in attendance, the performance blew away the audience who erupted in applause and gave a standing ovation.
For All-State, there are also openings for single students along with the submission of entire groups. Sophomore Jocelyn Warr, junior Emily Haddox and seniors Austin Nielsen, John Orton and Josiah Shell were selected for the All-State Mixed Choir. Juniors Noah Creswell and West Wilde competed with the All-State Jazz Band.
Nielsen stated that the music they performed was quite difficult, but he was very excited to be a part of All-State. “As a group, it’s cool that we’ve progressed enough to come together and be unified enough that we can compete and, as long as I do my work ahead of time, it’s there to be an enjoyable experience,” Nielsen shared.
Corrina Steinbach, the choir teacher at Vallivue High School, stated that she had never seen a men’s choir group go to All-State in the 16 years that she had been a part of the program. This means that the men this year will be setting the bar for the future of Men’s All-State Choir groups. After talking to Advanced Men’s sophomore Nikolas Plummer, a better view of what it meant to be invited to All-State Choir arose. “It’s definitely stressful, the idea of it being the first men’s group that’s made it into All-State,” Plummer commented regarding the topic.
When choosing the songs they were going to perform, Steinbach chose songs that had been done in recent years so that the men didn’t have to start learning songs entirely from scratch. The theme that Steinbach chose for the songs this year was Journey On, including songs in different languages and each song title flowing to form a sentence that correlated with the theme.
According to Steinbach in a Facebook post, the performance was called “entertaining and stunning” by music educators in attendance. She went on to state that “there wasn’t a dry eye in the room by the end. Words can’t describe the experience.”
