When Carmel High School senior Laney McNamar was in elementary school, she attended a show choir workshop conducted by North Central High School’s mixed show choir Counterpoints.
“It introduced me to show choir and made me want to do show choir,” McNamar said. “I had been dancing before. But I did it, and it introduced me to my love for singing, too, especially with dancing.”
CHS choir teacher Kyle Barker decided it would be a good idea to offer the first workshop for middle school students in Carmel. Barker student-taught at North Central High School, so he was familiar with its workshop. The Half Notes Show Choir Workshop is for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders and will be held Jan. 25. The Ambassadors, CHS’s mixed show choir, will help instruct the youngsters.
“It’s fun that now that I’m in show choir, I introduce it to a younger generation,” said McNamar, who is in her second year in Ambassadors. “It might inspire something and help them discover if they do have a love for music and dance to join choir or do dance classes.”
Junior Jack Martin, who is in his second year in Ambassadors, said he loves working with kids.
“If these kids get that experience at a younger age it could foster love for that show choir experience and make them more inclined to do it,” Martin said. “Less guys do show choir, so if kids come and hang out with me or other the Ambassador guys, they can see show choir is something that guys do.”
Barker is in his second year at CHS and serves as lead director for the Ambassadors.
“I’m super passionate about recruitment for younger kids,” he said. “We have something for little kids with the Princess Academy. We have a show choir camp for fifth through ninth grades, so we thought, ‘What can we do to help target some of the middle kids?’ So I thought, ‘Let’s try this.’”
The program begins at 4 p.m. and runs through halftime of the CHS boys basketball game. The Half Notes, the workshop attendees, will learn a show choir routine to The Jackson 5 song, “Blame it on the Boogie,” and then perform it at halftime. For more, visit carmelchoirs.org.
