Six concerts, musical set for FHS chorus
Heading into his second year at Farragut High School, choral director Mitchell Moore said “the school has a lot of things planned.
“As of now, we have six concerts,” he said. “The earliest is our fall concert, Oct. 5.
“Outside of that we have a lot of trips planned. There’s some exciting things we are going to do. I’m excited to get them off campus.”
One such activity is a retreat for the advanced group.
“They’ll go off campus,” he added. “We’ll have clinicians come in and we’ll rehearse our music, play some games, eat and do all those fun community-building things while still getting a head start on the year.”
The students also will be participating in Festival of Voices at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, auditions for honor choir and All-State, and students will go to the J.B. Lyle (state) Choral Festival at Pellissippi State Community College where students prepare music and get rated on their performance and sight-reading abilities.
Additionally, Moore is joining with theater teacher Dr. Anthony Wooley to stage a musical, “9 to 5,” from Dec. 9 through Dec. 11, at the school. The community will have an opportunity to support the choral department when students sell poinsettias, starting the end of October, as a fundraiser.
“We will be sending out information on our Facebook page,” Moore added.
“That following week, we will have our choral program’s winter concert on Dec. 14.”
Moore starting teaching at FHS in fall 2020, but he was hampered by what performances his students could not do because of the pandemic.
“Any time there is a new teacher, there’s always a lull in how many students you have,” he said.
“So, not only was I coming into that situation, but the pandemic was really difficult in terms of vocal singing and choral singing, just by way that everything’s spread,” Moore added.
“It was hard to get students to want to be a part of it, feel comfortable, so it was kind of the hardest thing that a teacher could have faced in terms of trying to recruit students into a program.”
Still, “it was a lot better situation than I had anticipated,” he said.
“We had one in-person concert in May, and everything else we did throughout the year, we just did in recordings that I sent out to the students and the parents to make sure we didn’t break any laws,” Moore added.
This year, he expects to have about 70 in the program.
“We’re still growing, but that’s double the amount we had last year,” Moore said. “It’s phenomenal.”
