2017 Kimberly Choral Festival

Autumn Gomez-Tagle '17 | Choir Council President

Hello parents, students, alumni, and community members! Welcome to 2017!

I am honored to invite you to join us on Tuesday, February 9, 2017 at 7:00 pm in the Lawrence Chapel for the Kimberly Choral Festival, featuring choirs from in grades 5-12 from schools across our district.  The theme of this concert is love!

Love is a difficult thing to write about. Not for nothing is every song on the radio about heartbreak or romance.  Not for nothing are there sonnets and plays about lost love, found love, and every love in between. It’s hard to nail down a definition, one final description of what “Love” is; it’s a pretty abstract concept.  Mr. Popke, in his infinite wisdom, knew this. So a few days ago in a rare break from hard work, he made us think about it.

What is love?

It is not just a question to be answered with “baby don’t hurt me”; this is a genuinely difficult concept. Nonetheless, we all took our best stab and wrote down an answer on a sticky note. We put them up on the board and read them aloud to each other, trying to come to a conclusion.

Love is...
Love is special.
Love is selfless.
​Love is open-armed.
Love means never having to be alone.
Love means getting to pay back what you’ve been given.

The answers flooded in; no two of them the same. I was touched at everyone’s varied definitions. There was no one answer that we had in common. What we did have in common, though, is a love of music.

Music is something different. It brings people together to willingly sing in front of a huge crowd of people. They practice and practice to audition for solos. They congratulate others when they are beaten for those same solos. Entire groups devote themselves to music above all else. After all, love is special.  

Music is for everyone. We all have flaws. We all have struggles. But when we come together to sing or play that is what is important. In music, everyone has value, and everyone is welcome; after all, love is open-armed. 

Choir is something unique. We help one another practice no matter if we already know it ourselves. We teach those younger than us the skills to succeed. We take pride in our successes as a team, because after all, love is selfless.  Choir is a second home. People tell me that coming to choir is the best part of their day, and I absolutely understand why. We are all a team, inside the classroom and out. It’s like a giant trust fall; no matter what happens to one of us, the others will catch them. After all, love means never having to do it alone.  

I have been playing music since I can remember, and I have spent four years giving everything I could to Kimberly Choirs. I have grown with the people I work with, and I have been given the privilege of some of the best mentors around. I am thankful above all else for the chance to give back what I have been given. After all, I love music. I love choir.

Our 2017 Kimberly School District Choir Festival is about just that; a common love of choir. We come together to honor each other, inspire those younger than us, and connect to those that came before us.

If music be the food of love, sing on!