Thanks for the music!

The All-State concert is a musical gift! It represents years of work, practice, hopes, dreams, ideas, musical growth, frustration, and heartache. It is a gift to the directors, the parents, the audience, and to the participants. And for this gift I must say thank you! Thank you for all the hours of practice and dedication. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for persevering when you wanted to give up. Thank you for using the talent God gave you to bless others. Thank you for creating a musical moment that brought tears, laughter, goosebumps, surprise, and JOY! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hello from All-State!

We had three separate rehearsals today totaling 7 1/2 hours of hard work and amazing musical moments. The director has a unique style of bringing together all 600 voices for one purpose. At the end of every rehearsal, students are invited to stand up and give their comments and compliments to all or parts of the choir. One student shared, "When we all sing together, it's like nature calling."

We ate dinner at the famous Hickory Park Restaurant with some special family guests. We would like to thank the Music Boosters for their generosity in paying for our meals while we're at All-State. Becca McLeran from Exira is joining us in our All-State experience. She's the fist All-State Chorus member from her school, and a private student of Mrs. Nichols.

Tomorrow we'll have three more rehearsals, and a concert at 7:30 p.m. at Hilton Coliseum on the ISU campus in Ames. We're proud to represent CAM at the most prestigious selective choir in the state.

by Jenna Karas and Mrs. Nichols

Three Performances in 4 Days!

I'm so proud of my students. They did a wonderful job at the Variety Show- the culmination of months of creating, planning, rehearsing, waiting, and work! They had fun and want to do it again! And then, before they (and myself) were fully recovered from that big weekend, we were off to spend the day singing at the Conference Vocal Festival at Payton-Churdan! We represented our school very well. Besides the facts that we were among the best prepared and had one of the best individual school performances (even though they are entirely sick of "Rock This Town") there are at least two more things that make me smile: We had 9 students audition for solo spots, (5 were chosen), AND our entire bass section was moved to the back of the choir by the director so they could lead the rest of the basses. Pretty cool. Also pretty cool was what happened during a break when they were testing our accompaniment CD in the gym sound system. My exhausted, talented, heroic students (many of whom were relaxing by sitting or laying on the floor) heard "their song" and immediately jumped up and began singing and dancing!! I'm just so proud.

Ps.
In the pictures, you can see the blue-shirted bass section and the soloists.