Riley Mohn – 11
Hamburg Area High School used to offer one select choir called Aerial Boundaries, however, this year they are offering two separate choirs instead. A select treble choir is one of them, where there are two higher feminine voices and two lower feminine voices, composed of sopranos and altos. Mrs. Jackson is the director for these choir groups, and was the conductor for the audition process and selected the 20 members in the treble choir.
Mrs. Jackson created the treble choir as the “formal touring community group” for Hamburg and said how she honestly had the idea because she “found treble music in the closet, and there were not many vocally strong men this year.” She enjoys creating these select groups to help students become stronger musicians. She stated that “the treble choir is not only a challenge for students, but a challenge for me as well, since it has harder rhythms and music.” She always decides the audition choir depending upon how many were in the select choir last year that are still willing to be in it. This year there would have been only two men to the nine women. Mrs. Jackson mentioned how prior to COVID, there was a group of twelve girls in the treble choir. Two of the students in the treble choir have a strong understanding that choir is important in their lives.
Delaney Muller is a Junior at HAHS and is a student leader at the Journey Cafe. Her favorite part of auditions was when everyone did the vocal warmups together. She said she “was nervous for a moment, but ended up being confident in the end.” She has only ever done the Journey praise band, so this was her first time joining a select music group for Hamburg. She is expecting to build up her confidence in singing and create memorable bonds with others in the treble choir. She has been wanting to join a group where the sopranos and altos could show their true potential and not be limited to purely one harmony and one melody. She said, “One of the main reasons I joined choir in elementary school and stuck with it is because music and singing are both very important to me and they just help me feel like myself. I feel like I can express myself through singing more than my own simple words.”
Prior to the treble choir, Mrs. Jackson created a select group called aerial boundaries where those who wanted to be more involved in choir could participate, and Sid Bonning was one of the people in Aerial Boundaries. Sid Bonning, a sophomore at HAHS, said that they had expected aerial boundaries to be more difficult and intimidating, however they were quickly proven wrong when they ended up feeling rather relaxed in the group. Sid said how, “I joined Aerial Boundaries for the same reasons I joined regular choir, because I love to sing, and I would take every opportunity to sing in a group like that,” and how they joined treble choir for the same reason.
Congratulations to the 20 voices in the treble choir, of which one group is Sid Bonning, Ava Bailey, Kirra Goetz, Serenade Dampman, and Oakly Bogardus, as the higher Soprano voices. The second Soprano voices are Hannah Ortiz, Elaina Hess, Greta Fink, Emalee Burkholder, and Evie Kern. The higher alto voices are Lucy and Ella Lytle, Ellie Grim, Mackenzie Hoover, and Alondra Perez. And the lower group of altos is Koa Binder, Shay McCarty, Delaney Muller, Maisie Weeks, and Riley Mohn.
