Students participating in choir during the pandemic were unable to perform a traditional choir concert. The solution to this complication was to have a virtual form of the concert. Choir students were recorded by AV Coordinator Adam Umbreit once the song was ready. The video of the concert was only sent to families. It could not be published for the public due to copyright laws. 

Junior Alexa Fleegal describes the important procedures taken to make this performance successful and safe.

“We practiced our music and we had to reconfigure our standing arrangement for the singing portion because we were usually seven to eight feet apart, but we were six feet apart to sing. The honors students got into groups of three or four,” Fleegal said. “We also did introductions for each of the songs for the whole concert. When we recorded the singing pieces in our six feet arrangement, AV Coordinator Adam Umbreit came and he recorded it for us.” 

Fleegal gives insight to how this version of their concert is better than the traditional in-person version of their concert.

“I think there are certain aspects that are better than when we do it in-person. I think it is more accessible to people so people who might be in nursing homes or people who might not be able to get a ride. I think it also helps with time conflicts,” Fleegal said.

Constructing their first virtual concert did come with challenges. They had to work together, and consistently work hard to make it audibly appealing.

“We had to work on being more confident and sounding louder, and also our pronunciation because it is hard to hear us with our masks,” Fleegal said.

Having the virtual concert showed people outside of choir that the students are continuing with drive and ambition to advance their skills. 

“We wanted to get our songs and our voices out there and to show everyone we are still doing something in choir,” sophomore Ethan Brunke said. 

By giving students access to watch themselves perform, it gave them the ability to track their progress. This was beneficial to Brunke.

“Now we have a way to look back in the future and see what we did this year and to show us how far we might have come in the future,” Brunke said. 

Brunke found enjoyment problem solving the best way to display the concert virtually. It gave them a chance to play with different virtual platforms.

“Just kind of working with a different form of media and the fact that it was a recorded kind of thing,” Brunke said. 

Senior Joanna Schmidt found positives within these obstacles as well. She came to the realization that performing this way can be helpful to students’ mental health by reducing stress levels.

“It was beneficial because we could redo it if we messed up and we didn’t have the stress of an actual concert,” Schmidt said.

 As a whole, having to differentiate individual voices within the audio was a struggle for the performers. 

“The biggest struggle was being able to hear my voice from far away and being able to pick out my own voice from the group. We had to adapt and once we did we worked really hard with what we had,” Schmidt said.