Flathead, Idaho choirs team up for show

Flathead High School choirs present a free concert together with the acclaimed Sonous Choir from Eagle (Idaho) High School tonight.

The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Flathead High auditorium.

Sonous is known as one of the finest high school choirs in the region, a distinction confirmed by their many invitations to perform at Northwest choral conventions.

 “I am thrilled that the Eagle High School choir is coming to us,” said Kevin Allen-Schmid, Flathead choral director.

“Our students have been blessed by recent exchanges with Gonzaga, Willamette and Portland State University choirs, and this concert with Sonous will certainly match those encounters. I heard Sonous at All-Northwest last year, where they wowed the audience of choral directors to the point of a standing ovation.”

The Eagle repertoire will include songs from Africa and Russia, plus madrigals, spirituals and modern choral tone poems by popular English and American composers.

The concert will feature Flathead’s own concert choir, freshly back from its own tour to Spokane and Portland, singing two of its greatest hits: “Gate Gate,” an ancient Buddhist mantra sung in Sanskrit and set to a modern rhythm, and “A Boy and a Girl,” one of the most lushly tonal choral compositions of modern times.

The 62-voice Flathead Varsity Choir will also be featured, with songs honed at its recent retreat, including a set of Shakespearean madrigals and a medley from the musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” complete with solos and staging.

The Idaho choir, on a four-day tour of Idaho, Montana and eastern Washington, is promoting a service project as part of its tour outreach.

Through the organization Ghana Make a Difference, some Eagle students are going to Ghana during spring break to volunteer at orphanages.

One of the orphanages’ needs is a supply of children’s socks. The Eagle choir invites its tour audiences to help with this cause by bringing new pairs of socks to the concert for both boys and girls, ages newborn to 12 years. All donations gathered during the tour will be taken to the African orphanages this spring.