Throughout the year, the EHS choirs have been facing a multitude of challenges because of the pandemic. There have been problems with the masks, social distancing, or the trouble with the concerts in general. The last two choir concerts have been outside, which is not the best experience for the members. It is not only a poor environment for projecting their voices, but it is also not nearly as comfortable as being inside, especially when they had to do their winter concert outside.  So far, it has been hard to hold concerts inside because of social distancing and the lack of space within the high school.

 Christina Contreras, choir teacher at Eaton High School said, “The masks affected us immensely and you could imagine it is hard enough to talk in them but it’s even hard to sing in them. I teach by having them mimic my mouth movements, and trying to teach this year with masks was a huge thing for me and the other teachers too.” The masks created a massive problem for choir members to project their voices and to be able to follow Mrs. Contreras’s mouth movement. 

Luckily, this latest concert was inside for the first time this year. It was located at the Evangelical Free Church, which allowed space for social distancing for the students and the crowd. Although there had to be a limited number of audience members, it was set up in an efficient manner. For example, when the Troubadours got on stage to sing the friends and family of that group would be allowed into the auditorium, and the audience rotated throughout the groups of the choir. 

Tuesday’s choir concert had Men’s Choir, Women’s Choir, Bella Voce, Troubadours, and the whole choir sing. One of the songs the Men’s Choir sang at this concert was “Humble and Kind” by L.McKenna, which had a solo by Carter Brogdon. “The Best of Glee” by Andres, Davis, Huff was sung by the Women’s Choir. This song had many solos in it, including Karli Havel, Tyanne Bartel, Aedalin Barclay, Alejandra Naranjo, Brandi Griffin, Madison Flynn, and Haley Jeglum. Bella Voce sang a song called “Leave No Song Unsung” by L.Spevack, and finally, “Bonse Aba (Zambian Folk Song)” by V. Johnson was one of the songs sung by the Troubadours, which had EHS band director Mr. Doddridge drumming throughout the song. At the end of the concert, all of the choirs sang “I Just Wanna Shine” by Arr. M. Huff, ending their performance with a bang.

Dimitruius Reyes, junior at Eaton High School and member of Men’s Choir said, “The concert went well. I think we did good but we just need more expression on our faces.” Since the choir was so used to having masks on, they were not used to having so much expression on their face this year. Overall though, this choir concert went extremely well and created new opportunities for future concerts within the pandemic.