This year we are planning a wonderful spring tour with our students to Southern California. Each year we take a small trip, but this year has some wonderful opportunities involved and we are looking for some help from our community, family, and friends! 

The trip will take place April 19-21, 2018 to Southern California. It will involve an exchange with Beverly Hills High School where the students will exchange songs that they have prepared, discuss experiences in their own communities and performance ensembles, and get to sing and make beautiful music together. They will also get the life-changing opportunity to attend a Los Angeles Philharmonic and Master Chorale Concert of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, two very famous works for orchestra and chorus. Our tour will conclude with a festival in two parts: students will sing prepared songs for adjudicators and receive feedback on how they can improve their sound and overall performance as well as combine with other high schools to perform two mass chorus numbers. Our clinicians this year are Dr. Joshua Habermann (Dallas Symphony Chorus) and Deke Sharon (arranger of Pitch Perfect movie songs). The students will even get the opportunity to perform one of Deke Sharon's songs with him directing! 

 

Due to the political and economic climate of our world right now, funding for the arts is at an all time low. Schools receive very little funding for their classrooms and none for extracurricular trips such as these. Some of my most fond memories in high school come from my choir tours and one of my goals is to give my students the memories and experiences that I had! 

Other choir fundraisers are covering some of the cost so far, however, inevitably it may come down to family donations. SLOHS Choral Dept. always strives to make our trips free of cost to our students to ensure that everyone gets to participate in the experience!