As choir students place the finishing touches on this year’s performances, choir director Vince Matia reshapes the format of the program for next year, hoping to accommodate a wider range of musical interests.

Starting in the fall, South will offer its first standing choir entitled Rhapsody and Blue, which won’t include dancing likeshow choir. The change will reduce the number of in-school show choirs to two: the varsity Pointe Singers and junior varsity show choir. This will cause The Tower Bells show choir to be offered as an extracurricular instead of a class.

“Some students like to sing, but they may not like to dance,” Matia said. “A standing choir is just for students who want to learn music, but don’t want to do all of the costume changes and dance moves.”

Pointe Singers member Rebecca Dral ’23 said the idea was not completely unexpected, as low enrollments in choir this past year made covering all voice parts challenging. The students were introduced to the idea in a meeting about the upcoming year on April 7.

“People raised their hands and asked questions, and it was a very welcoming environment,” Dral said. “You didn’t feel bombarded by all of these changes being announced.”

According to Matia, opening up choir to a larger group of people interested in singing will make the entire program stronger and hopefully make students form a new enthusiasm for choir.

“Show choir is wonderful, but doing it all of the time makes you want to broaden your horizons,” Matia said. “There’s some things that standing choirs can do that show choirs can’t and vice versa.”

The changes for next year also represent a new focus of the choir program according to Pointe Singer member Braden Vogel ’23.

“(Choir is going to be) focused more on bringing a good experience to the students and not necessarily doing everything following traditions,” Vogel said. “People who are trying to cling on to the past traditions will find it to be less enjoyable than the people who are just going with it and having fun no matter what.”

Dral acknowledges any sort of change can be difficult for students, but the only way to effectively transition into the new structure next year is by having confidence in those making the decisions.

“We need to trust in leadership, trust in Mr. Matia and trust in the (other) people in charge of choir,” Dral said. “They’ve thought this through a lot, so they know the challenges that are going to come up and the possibilities that can arise. Not trusting them would be wasting all of the exciting opportunities we will have in the next year.”