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Hundreds of students, one voice

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Luverne hosts Big South Conference Choral Festival
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By
Mavis Fodness

Hundreds of area high school students gathered in Luverne Monday to learn more about and share their love of choral music.
This is the second year for the Big South Conference Choral Festival where six of the 13 schools spent the day at Luverne High School in rehearsals with two visiting clinicians.
By late afternoon, all six high school choirs (491 students) came together for the mass choir rehearsal.
“It is great that nearly 500 students can join together and sing as one choir,” said Seana Graber, Luverne’s choral instructor and event organizer.
“This can be a very powerful moment when you hear that many students working together to accomplish one goal.”
Other participating schools included Jackson, St. James, Fairmont, Blue Earth and Worthington, who hosted last year’s event.
Graber said the choral festival has been in existence for 47 years and was called the Southwest Choral Festival. The name changed two years ago when the conference added more schools.
“Because our conference is so large, we’ve chosen to have two festivals,” Graber added.
The other Big South Choral Festival was also conducted Monday in Marshall.
Each festival concluded with an evening concert where each high school choir, the combined mass choir and an honor choir performed. The honor choir consisted of 12 students chosen from each school.
Luverne’s honor choir participants were sopranos Merrissa Brandt, Madilyn Oye, Sandra Renken; altos Samantha Aanenson, Alyssa Schipper, Freddi Stroeh; tenors Matthew Davis, Matthew Keller, Joel Thacker; basses Jack Baustian, Seth Priebe and Quinton Siebenahler.
Dr. Bradley Miller, assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at the University of Minnesota – Morris, served as one of the day’s clinicians and was the honor choir director.
Joseph Osowski, director of choirs at St. Michael-Albertville High School and former choral director at Worthington, was the other clinician and directed the mass choir.
“We are very fortunate that the conference sponsors this event and that our schools value the festival and encourage choirs to get together and perform for each other and with each other,” Graber said.
“They can really learn a lot from this festival.”

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