John Hayden, Vocal Music Director, High School & Middle School
In grades 7-12 we currently offer 10 curricular and extracurricular choirs that have around 300 students participating. These students and choirs sang at 8 home concerts, the Veteran’s Day program, Adventureland, Coral Ridge Mall, 5 show choir competitions, Madrigal Dinner, State Solo contest, State Large Group competition, and Graduation. In addition the department will be taking a trip to Orlando from June 5-11.
We kicked off our year with our state honor choirs. Senior Addesyn Duball was selected to the 2023 Iowa All State Choir. 8th grade students Gracin Becker and Joel Hacker were selected to the middle school version of the All State Choir called the “Opus Honor Choir”. This choir is made up of the best 180 male singers in the state of Iowa.
Our department, along with the drama department, produced our Fall musical “Once Upon a Mattress”.
We quickly moved into preparations for our annual Madrigal Dinner in December and started to begin final preparations for our show choir competition season.
During our show choir season we were very busy with all three show choirs. Our middle school show choir “Illusions” competed in Mount Pleasant, Indianola and Jefferson placing as high as second place.
Our junior varsity show choir, Jubilation, Inc competed at Anamosa placing 2nd, Indianola, placing 2nd and making it to the championship finals, and the Cedar Rapids Jefferson competition placing 3rd in the prep division.
Our varsity show choir, Celebration Company placed 3rd at the Anamosa competition, hosted “Touch of Class” and competed at Indianola placing 4th. They finished their season competing at Hastings, MN and then won the 3A division at the Cedar Rapids Jefferson competition. Addesyn Duball was also named “Outstanding Female Soloist”.
We will finish our year with Large Group competition in Mount Vernon, Graduation, and our trip to Florida in June. It’s been a rewarding and successful year for the singers at Benton Community!
