As Yelm High School’s choir program’s trip to New York City on May 8 and performance inside Carnegie Hall on May 11 draws closer, the YHS Choir Boosters Committee continues to raise money for the students’ upcoming trip.
A benefit spaghetti feed will be hosted from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 28, at the Nisqually Valley Moose Lodge, 1117 Yelm Ave. W.
YHS choir teacher Tim Henderson said that Steele Barrel BBQ will be donating spaghetti sauce, pasta, salad and bread for the fundraiser event, and the Nisqually Valley Moose Lodge has donated time and space for the event.
“Steele Barrel is graciously going to donate all of the spaghetti. Getting them involved has been awesome. The Moose Lodge is helping us out tremendously as well by donating the space,” Henderson said on Monday, Feb. 24. “It’s turning into a 100% profit fundraiser for us.”
In addition to the spaghetti feed, Henderson said his students are preparing to sing for the audience in open mic night fashion, serving as live entertainment.
Tickets for the event can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/ChoirSpaghetti. The cost is $20.
“We’re in the last month and a half, basically, of trying to raise money to help support the kids get there. We’ll make it, because the intent the whole time was to fundraise to help offset the cost for families,” Henderson said. “At this point in time, we’re almost to our $60,000 goal of fundraising. We’re trying to keep this pushing until the end.”
Henderson added fundraising for the trip will conclude at the end of March, and, following its completion, the choir program will begin paying for the trip to New York City. The learning leading up to the choir’s trip to the East Coast has been no easy task, as the performance in New York will be based on Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
While practicing and rehearsing for the performance, Henderson said he and choir members had to practice singing in four different languages.
“The students are knee deep in learning the music. There’s seven movements of the work called Xantolo. It’s a requiem mass based on the Day of the Dead. There’s very much Spanish flair throughout all the music. With Dia de los Muertos, it’s a party. You’re celebrating life. So you do have moments of sorrowfulness within the music, but then the rest of it is a celebration,” Henderson said. “We’re singing in four different languages. Spanish, that one’s easy. Latin, that one’s easy. But Nahuatl, native to the region of Mexico before the Spanish came, and Tének, which is also native — I had to learn all of these different sounds that we don’t hear anymore. The work I had to do to learn how to teach this has been crazy, but it will be very rewarding in the end.”
The YHS choir program will depart for the East Coast on May 7 and arrive in the early morning hours of May 8. They’ll have two rehearsals for the show, one on Friday, May 9, and the second on Saturday, May 10. Then, alongside the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Central Arkansas, the University of Nebraska Kearney, the University of Guadalajara, a high school out of Colorado and a professional choir from Mexico City, the Tornados will perform inside Carnegie Hall.
“It’s a big deal. One of the students said the hardest part about it is they’re used to being able to go online and find the music to practice singing it and learn it. They can’t do that because it’s all brand new world premiere music,” Henderson said. “Any help that the community can give to us, the better. We’re going to go on day one, when we land, to the World Trade Center so they can see the site of 9/11 and go through the museum. I want to pass that on to the next generation — which I think we haven’t done a good job of, honestly.”
Community members can get a preview of YHS’s performance in New York City as the choir will perform on Wednesday, March 12, at Yelm High School. Henderson’s students will perform two of the seven movements and snippets of a third.
“Granted, it’s just the choir with the piano. It’s not even close to the same when you have a full orchestra go,” Henderson said. “To get them in front of the audience of parents that aren’t going to follow us to New York to watch, they’re going to get a snippet of some of the music we’ve been working on.
“If a community member feels so inclined to just randomly donate $100 bucks to the choir program to help support us, that goes a long way also. Just to get students access for this opportunity, and to help with costs for families,” Henderson added. “Some families struggle a little bit more because of the cost of living right now. How can we help support them without them having to go the other direction to give their child an experience. It’s a community effort.”
