gquandel

By gquandel

SACCYC

This is a piece I have composed for the St. Andrew’s Community Contemporary Youth Choir. It is a choir consisting of all youth and lead by youth. My brother, Kieffer, and I are the directors of this choir. St. Andrew’s Community Contemporary Youth Choir, or SACCYC, is a new program in St. Andrews to get more youth involved with the church. We started this choir in September, but much preparation went into it before the first rehearsal. My brother and I were approached by the music board directors in our church last March. They asked us to start an all youth, contemporary Christian choir. From there on, all of my free nights went into planning this new potential program. I spent time listening to new contemporary Christian artists, and deciding what songs could be rearranged for choral use. Once I had a list of songs, I ordered a pile of music books that had basic sheet music to the selected songs. The next step was a toughie, my brother and I had to rearrange the solo, melodic line only songs into full ensemble harmonic pieces. In English, that means we had to essentially rewrite each song, to make it group compatible. This took most of our preparation time. Next came casting the choir members. Together, we made a list of 15 total (5 sopranos, 5 mezzos, 5 baritones) youth community members who were interested in vocal music. Next, we had our first rehearsal. At this rehearsal, we taught everyone their parts and they began making music together. Now we have a full, flowing song that is almost performance ready. I believe SACCYC has unlimited potential.

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