By Alexis Johnson-Williams
During the holiday season, different music groups come together to perform the world’s most popular Christmas songs. On December 7, Shreve put on a Christmas program where the orchestra, choir, and band performed. Each group started the process of preparing for the Christmas concert at different times: choir started in September, while band and orchestra started in late October.
The auditorium was filled with parents supporting their children from one of the three groups, as well as their fellow peers . Performing in front of that many people can make performers nervous but there are tactics to curb the nervousness.
“I try to find one person in the audience and make strong eye contact with them. It helps me. I can’t look at my family, but I can stare down a stranger,” choir member Ta’neya Addington stated.
Choir and Band each had a few challenges with the pieces they performed. The band specifically trained for the Christmas concert during football season, adding another layer of pressure.
“We had set days that we practiced concert pieces, but we were also in the middle of parade/football season so we had to separate our time between the two commitments,” Band captain Rylee Fleming said.
During the concert, the choir had a unique prop to use in their performance of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
“For the Twelve Days of Christmas, we made jingle bells to put on our hands, for the five golden rings. However, the rings kept falling apart before we even got on stage. Like, we were tying rings back together 5 minutes before,” Addington explained.
Each performance came together harmoniously. The band contributed to the choir’s performance adding claps to one of the songs. The band’s addition to the song and crowd participation electrified the choir.
“During Deck the Halls, the band started clapping. At first, the energy in the choir was nervous, however, the participation built up our confidence,” Addington said.
Overall, the participants enjoyed the concert, and it was a night filled with the Christmas spirit.
Fleming explained, “A few days after the concert we watched the concert videos, and I got goosebumps because of how pretty we sounded. Everything came together in the end.”