Hi-Line Living: Big concert for small towns

The Havre Middle School auditorium teemed with seventh- and eighth-grade choir students Monday, as students from middle school choirs throughout the area gathered to take part in the Invitational Choral Festival.

By 8:30 a.m. members of the Havre Middle School choir were in the auditorium standing in clusters engaged in conversation, while students from Chinook. Shelby and Turner arrived.

A cart with bottled water was wheeled in and students flocked over to it, each grabbing a bottle and scrawling their names on them,

For Cianna Mellinger, a seventh-grader from Shelby, this year is her first time taking part in the festival.

"I really like singing and I really like traveling and discovering new things, and it is fun to meet new people," Mellinger said.

Havre Middle School choir director Rhonda Minnick said that every year she reaches out to choir directors from other middle schools within the area and invites them and their students to come and take part in a short evening concert.

The festival, she said, happens each March in observance of Music in Our Schools Month and is a way to highlight the benefits of school music programs.

The public is also welcome to attend the festival free of charge.

Minnick said students who take part in school music programs tend to have higher scores on tests than their peers. As a school choir director, she said, she wants to keep that in the minds of people. especially school administrators.

"Music is really, really important in schools and it is a program we don't ever want to lose," Minnick said. "We think it is highly valued."

Before Minnick became the Havre Middle School choir director six years ago, she taught in Chinook and brought her choir students to the festival.

She said the festival gives students from small schools to get the chance to be part of a larger choral performance.

"It's not every day you get to sing with 150 or 160 people, and I think that is a unique experience," Minnick said.

The choral festival began in the 1970s, Minnick said. She said the program was ended and restarted several times throughout the 1970s and '80s. It has been an annual event since the 1990s she said.

Students from participating schools show up well before the festival begins, and spend the day rehearsing six songs with a guest director.

This year, the festival was scheduled for March 5, but at the last minute was postponed due to snow.

The snow, she said, did cause some disruptions.

The middle school choir at Sunburst was scheduled to attend but because of a scheduling conflict, they were not able to take part on the new date, Minnick said.

Malta School choir director Larry Swingen also was prevented from coming to the festival on the alternate date. Angela Pratt at the last minute was brought on to replace Swingen.

Because of the change in date, Minnick said, she had to find a way to keep the music fresh in the minds of her students without over rehearsing.

Pratt said that she was brought on to be the festival's guest director at the last minute. However, she said she did not feel panicked in preparing for the festival.

"This is what we do, you just get used to it, " Pratt said.

Preparation for the festival is a day-long affair, Minnick said.

Students arrive in the morning and at 9 a.m. join up with the guest director to learn warm-up exercises and rehearse the songs. At 11 a.m. they take a half hour for lunch and then rehearse until 3:15 p.m. Students are then able to go off for 5:45 p.m. when they come back for a short dance or "mixer." The festival than happens at 6:30 p.m.

For Alyssa Oliver, an eighth-grader in the Havre choir, last year the dance was the day's high point.

"We had all the schools in the cafeteria for a dance before the concert, that was real fun," she said.

In all, 140 students took part in the festival this year, with 60 from Havre Middle School, Minnick said. Another 49 came from Shelby, 22 from Chinook and nine from Turner.

Minnick said that when she began taking the reins in organizing the festival six years ago, middle school choirs from as far west as Browning, east as Malta and as far south as Box Elder used to take part in the festival.

Fewer middle schools, though, are taking part in the festival as many music programs at schools with low enrollment have dwindled or been ended altogether.

She said that the Chester-Joplin-Inverness school district has tried to come, but lacks the students to gave a middle school choir.

"Some of these schools don't even have music teachers anymore," Minnick said. "It is hard to find a music teacher, hard to keep them."

The schools, she said, have grown more isolated, especially in remote areas, and said that is all the more reason that the festival needs to continue as a way to bring the district together.

Bailey Scoyen, an eigth-grader from Chinook, said that she loves the chance the festival gives her to meet students from other schools.

"We are such a small school, so you get a choir of 17 or 18 kids and then you come in here and it is a whole bunch of kids and we are just singing all together. so that is really nice," she said.

The show also introduces the students to songs in genres of music they usually are not exposed to.

Oliver said this year one of the songs that will be performed is "Follow the Drinking Gord" a traditional spiritual song that she said was sung by slaves as they fled slavery on the underground railroad.

Other songs this year were "Durme Durme," a Judeo-Spanish lullaby; "Thunder," a song about a wild mustang, "Shoshone Love Song," a Native American poem set to music and the jazz classic "Beyond the Sea."

Students also play bass, drums, a woodblock and a shaker,

Minnick said the Have Middle School choir will perform "Let It Be" from the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack.

The other school choirs, Minnick said, are welcome to also perform a song, but many opt not to.

Unlike in Havre, she said, the person who is the choir director often plays multiple roles and learning another song in addition to the five others can be time consuming.

Ahead of the concert, some of the choir members do have some worries.

Jordan Gregoire, a seventh-grader from Havre, said he has some mild stage fright, but thinks he will be fine because when he is on stage, other people will be standing alongside him.

The hardest part about the concert is learning the songs that are in foreign languages, he said.

Gregoire said "Durme Durme" is challenging because since the song is not in English he does not know what the words mean.

Pratt said, while the foreign language pieces are a little more challenging, she thinks they are ones that the students can perform.

"They are all things they will have fun with, I think." she said.

A guest director leads the choir at the concert and gives students the opportunity to be directed by someone other than their school's choir director, Minnick said.

When searching for the choir she looks for someone who knows their craft, but also someone who can connect with middle schoolers,

There are different ways of doing that.

Carter Leeds, an eighth-grader from Havre, said that during last year's festival, guest director Thomas Beatty told students a story that was pretty funny.

Swingen said middle school students are positive and full of energy.

"I take into consideration their attention span and the full day of rehearsal and come up with goals they can achieve quickly on our way to the ones harder to reach," Swingen said.

Along the way he works to hold their attention with jokes, anecdotes, juggling and walking on his hands.

Minnick said that the festival and choir in general offer students something that will stay with them throughout their lives, even if they don't become professional musicians,

"It's one of those lifelong skills that once they leave our programs, they have if for the rest of their lives," she said.