James Halvorson, Choir Director at Shadow Ridge High School is an extremely passionate and motivated teacher who has benefited the choir department in many ways.
Shadow Ridge offers a choir program unique to many other schools. Unlike competing programs, Shadow Ridge offers five different chorus groups at different levels. The beginning choirs include Treble and Bass Beginners, usually for freshman students. Moving up, there is a Treble Intermediate Choir offered to sophomore-senior students, usually who have completed beginner choirs. In addition, there are Advanced and Chamber Choirs for all voices. Chamber Choir is an audition based eight part ensemble. While each choral group requires great levels of dedication, Chamber Choir is especially demanding, reserved for the best and most dedicated students.
“Our choir department is full of dedicated individuals who strive to sing challenging repertoire at the highest level.” Mr. Halvorson states, “Our Chamber Singers have set a standard of excellence that feeds down to our other ensembles.”
The Shadow Ridge choir program is very demanding compared to many other schools.
“We have a standard of excellence that has resulted in eleven years of festival groups receiving the highest ratings at competitive festivals and our reputation in the district is for impactful performances,” Mr. Halvorson says.
The strict attention to detail and emphasis on accountability makes it possible for Shadow’s choirs to out- perform many others when it comes to competing. Each student is expected to come to class prepared and familiar with new music ready to ask questions and face challenges.
Although Shadow’s choirs are deeply accomplished, the department still faces its own challenges. Once students join choir, they usually stay for their remaining time in high school, however getting students to join is a different story. Most students end up joining between their junior and senior year limiting their opportunities in the program.
“Our biggest challenge is getting more students in the door,” Mr. Halvorson states. “Fighting the stigma that choir is too hard or that it isn’t “cool” is just a lack of understanding about what we do on a daily basis. Choir “is” and should be for everyone. We have 5 different ensembles for all skill levels.”
Choir is an excellent way of building skills like leadership, confidence, communication, and teamwork. These skills learned in choir often translate to higher academic performance in many of these students.
These challenges however, cannot undermine the passion Halvorson has for his craft. After spending his high school years in many different choirs, he moved on to complete many years of college education training to become an accomplished director.
“I love how choir becomes the agent of change that turns young singers into responsible, caring, passionate, and thoughtful young adults,” states Mr. Halvorson.“We learn to work as a team. We embrace everyone and find ways to use their talents to bring our community closer together.”
