Sing Montana! Youth Choir

Youth Choir failed to attract enough interest for February, so the program is suspended until further notice.

BRAIN ALERT!!! Having an excellent program requires that lots of information change hands! We’ve got the entire 2023/2024 season planned out to the day already. So this page is packed, and is best read when you can set aside some quiet minutes for it. We need all of this information to transfer over—which will save all parties considerable time and frustration in the long run. What we’re trying to build here is worth taking a few careful minutes to read!

This is our Homeschool Choir in concert–May 2019. This chorus was from age 9 and up, including parents, so that we could fill out the voice parts. It’s quite similar in structure to our new Sing Montana! Youth Choir, except that parents aren’t invited! : )

The Spirit of the Sing Montana! Youth Choir

This is a special that’s fun, well-organized, and challenging all at once. We’re in it for the love of the people, the love of music, and the love of excellence in general. Most parents, of course, will be pleased with almost any musical performance their kids do, but our aim goes the extra mile: to put on performances (even with Kid’s Choir) that a general audience will find highly energetic and entertaining. So this goes far beyond just being a casual singalong club or a music class. Individual singers are expected to learn the notes and words accurately, as well as to match details, such as the vowel sounds we use and the timing of the song. So naturally, we always hope for singers who are the sort to have lots of fun while working hard—and that seems to be mostly what we get! But we also do lots and lots of training. We don’t just hope for kids who are already good at it; we do our best to train the ones we’ve got!

The Merger of Three Choirs

Many of you will know that we’re just starting up our homeschoool choir program after a post-COVID hiatus. We were hoping to fill out three ensembles (ages 7-9, 10-12, and 13-18), but didn’t have enough registrations. Rather than to wait another year, we decided to merge all three choirs into one, while will make it similar to the ensemble we started with in 2018. We’ll have to tweak some things to readjust, but it’ll be worth it. And this will give us some momentum in building our program, as opposed to waiting another year!

DATES FOR 2023/2024 SEASON—
ALL 3 CHOIRS

REHEARSAL DAY/TIME—Year-Round

CHOIRDAYTIME
Youth ChoirWednesdays11:00am to 12:15pm

SPRING REHEARSAL/PERFORMANCE DATES

WEEKEVENTDATE
Week 1RehearsalWednesday, February 7, 2024
Week 2RehearsalWednesday, February 14, 2024
Week 3RehearsalWednesday, February 21, 2024
Week 4RehearsalWednesday, February 28, 2024
Week 5RehearsalWednesday, March 6, 2024
Week 6RehearsalWednesday, March 13, 2024
Week 7RehearsalWednesday, March 20, 2024
Week 8RehearsalWednesday, March 27, 2024
Week 9RehearsalWednesday, April 3, 2024
Week 10RehearsalWednesday, April 10, 2024
Week 11RehearsalWednesday, April 17, 2024
Week 12RehearsalWednesday, April 24, 2024
Week 13Dress RehearsalMonday, April 29, 2024. 5:30pm-8:30pm–Sing Montana!
Week 13PerformanceFriday, May 3, 2024. 5:30pm-8:30pm–Sing Montana!
Week 13PerformanceSaturday, May 4, 2024. 5:30pm-8:30pm–Sing Montana!

LOCATION

The rehearsals and the performances will be at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church at:

180 24th St W, Billings, MT 59102
(Across from West High)

See Google Maps for this location.

GENERAL INFORMATION

TUITION PER SEMESTER
Tuition is $100/semester, payable on the first rehearsal of each semester.
The Spring semester (13 weeks) includes about 12 regular rehearsals, a dress rehearsal, and 2 performances.
Cash, check, or debit.

1 Semester or 2?
Ideally, we’ll have all the singers year-round, but we hate to turn anybody away if they can make the one semester, but not the other. FYI, we do start in the Fall rehearsing some of the Spring repertoire, but someone starting in the Spring would still have time to catch up.
The fall concert, Montana Christmas! is a big annual Christmas show, but we’ll start in the Fall learning music for the Spring show, too.

CODE OF CONDUCT
To keep what we’re doing special and enjoyable, we work hard to be sure everybody is on the same page when it comes to the behaviors that are expected. Please study the following Code of Conduct. This must be signed by parents and singers alike.

Code-of-Conduct-Youth-Choir-July-2023Download


MEDIA RELEASE FORM
Doing the work of having one or more choirs is one thing. Don’t the work of promoting them is quite another! As a small organization, we have to be very smart about efficiency in our publicity efforts, and in the 2023/2024 season, we plan to level-up on our promotional game. This means we need loads of pictures and videos and recordings for social media, for advertising, and so forth. Therefore, we need a media release from every member of our ensembles to ensure that there’ll never be a problem with us using their images and recordings in our promotional efforts. You can find our Media Release page here.

PITCH-MATCHING TESTS
This is not pitch-matching test required for Youth Choir, although some special singing roles (solos, etc.) are likely to be reserved to those who have demonstrated that they can match pitches accurately.

SPECIAL NEEDS POLICY
We’re so torn on the question of who we can accommodate and who we can’t. If your singer seems to have any special needs, please do take a few minutes to read our Special Needs Policy here.

CONCERT ATTIRE
We will have a strict dress code for our concerts, although the details are yet to be determined. We’ll publish that as soon as we can. At the most, it will call for all black attire (tops, bottoms, and shoes), though we are considering having one or more of the homeschool choirs wear their Montana Christmas! T-shirts with black bottoms and shoes in the show.

We’re working out the shirt colors now, but this will be the basic look of the shirt. (On the back, they’ll say “singmontana.org“)

T-SHIRTS
One t-shirt is included in the annual tuition. Singers will get a brand new Montana Christmas! T-shirt in the first month of Fall rehearsals, and those singing with us in the Spring Semester will get a short-sleeve T-shirt, provided we have at least 20 students enrolled. (The shirt is not yet designed.) Not only are the shirts fun to wear—and not only would they make for an easy top-half of a uniform (if we choose to go that direction), but we hope that the regular wearing of the shirts will help us to build our ensembles and our audiences alike.

HOW TO SIGN UP
Contact us with questions here! Or if you’re ready to register, please go to our Google Form here.