Palatine High choir rehearses for Caribbean cruise
Palatine High School's concert choir has so many gigs this holiday season, they had to turn some away including the White House!
That's right. Last year, Choral Director Steve Sivak accepted an invitation for the choir to perform at the White House as part of its Christmas Open House festivities. This year, regrettably, they had to decline a return invitation.
“We're just so busy,” says Sivak, now in his 10th year, “and part of it is finances. With leaving on our cruise on Dec. 26, it's a lot to ask of families at this time of year.”
You read it right. They're leaving on a Bahamas cruise the day after Christmas, but it will be a working vacation. They will be singing all four days on the cruise.
In all, 59 of the 79 concert choir members will be heading to the Caribbean and, for most, it will be a first-time excursion.
Turns out, Sivak spent two years working as a singer and dancer on a cruise ship, and he wants his students to experience another outlet for their performances.
“I want them to know about the different opportunities that are out there,” Sivak says, “like seeing the behind-the-scenes workings of a cruise ship.”
Yet, even before they set sail, the choir will travel to the Chicago studios of WFMT 98.7 FM radio, where they will record an hour of music. Their performance will be broadcast Christmas Day and again Dec. 30 in Chicago and nationally.
“We found out that we're only the third school to be invited to perform for their Christmas Day broadcast,” Spivak says.
Their holiday gigs started last month when the coed Midnight Blues jazz group performed at the Rolling Meadows Public Library as part of its Jazz and Java concert series.
They have continued with gigs in Arlington Heights and Palatine, and next week will perform at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. The community can get a sneak peek of their upcoming performances at the Holiday Choral Concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, in the Altergott Theater at Palatine High School.
At a recent rehearsal, Spivak urged his students to keep up their energy, to concentrate on their tone, while paying attention to their faces and diction. Don't swallow your words, he told them.
“It's getting there; it's grown immensely since we last did it,” Spivak told them. “You're beginning to hear the complexities, so hopefully the fruits of your labors are paying off.”
Each selection from “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” to “Pat a Pan,” a French carol, and a lively “Jingle Bells” medley features layers of harmony, some choreography and lots of rich sounds.
At the end of their version of the “William Tell Overture,” in which students emulated the sounds of different instruments using neutral syllables, they resonated with interwoven tones, sounding indeed like an orchestra.
“It's a challenge because there's not any words,” says junior Nici Hendrickson of Palatine, “but it's one of our favorites.”
His classmate, junior Griffin Mergele of Palatine, is in his first year with the choir. Already he was busy playing lacrosse and serving on student council, but he took the plunge and signed up.
“It turned out to be a lot different that I thought,” Mergele says. “Just being able to sing without anyone judging you makes it fun.”
Senior Katia Degtyareva of Palatine will be going on her first cruise. She sang at the White House last year and traveled to London the year before that. Oh, the places choir has taken her.
“I just let the music take me,” Degtyareva says.
Suffice it to say, Sivak believes in getting his choir students out of their rehearsal room and performing in public.
“Music needs to be shared,” he says firmly. “There's a whole world out there beyond our little cocoon here in our rehearsal room. We need to let people know that there's hope in the world, and that there's hope in kids.”