Shepard choir hopes to go out to the ballgame
High school singers’ recorded performance may be featured in White Sox seventh-inning stretch
No fans are allowed at major league baseball games this season, but 23 members of the Shepard High School choir program might have a work around.
The students, who make up roughly a quarter of the total choir program across all levels at the Palos Heights school, recorded their rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with hopes that the Chicago White Sox will play it inside Guaranteed Rate Field during a game.
Roland Hatcher, Shepard’s director of voice, said the idea was born out of a desire to find something that would excite the students from the proverbial first pitch of a school year that started remotely, leaving group activities such as choir benched.
“It could be a really meaningful thing for these students, something they could be instantly proud of,” Hatcher said.
The White Sox have been doing a virtual seventh-inning stretch this season, with fans singing the ballpark classic. Occasionally, NBC Sports picks up some of it for the broadcast, but there are no guarantees
Hatcher grewup in Orland Park as a fan of the South Siders and is a season-ticket holder. After seeing what the Sox were doing for the stretch under unique circumstances, he got the idea to submit a virtual choir video.
“They seemed very receptive to it,” he said.
From there, Hatcher said he reached out to students from freshmen to show choir seniors.
“We opened it to everybody,” Hatcher said. “Thatwas important tome.”
Inevitably, some Cubs fans politely declined.
“I had some kids say, ‘If my dad hears me say ‘root, root, root for the White Sox,’ I’m going to be sleeping in the garage,’” Hatcher said with a laugh.
But the White Sox faithful quickly added their names to the lineup. And for others, baseball was not necessarily the first thought they had.
“I immediately wanted to get involved because I miss performing,” senior Lena Werner said.“We haven’t been able to do that much this year.”
Still, Werner had some hesitations. She recorded her part in a friend’s bedroom at midnight, hopeful but admittedly a bit skeptical.
“I thought the final product was not going to be good at all,” Werner said. “I was really hoping it was going to come out good.”
Also featured in the video is senior Cassadie Comiskey, who is the great-great-granddaughter of White Sox founding owner Charles Comiskey. She said she is a Sox fan “by choice, but also if I wasn’t I think I’d be disowned,” she joked.
“I was unsure how it would work out, but I was willing to give it a try,” she said.
With students at Shepard starting the year remotely, Hatcher said choir has “inevitably had a lot of challenges.” And when it came to the video in particular, recording the parts solo and editing them together was the only real option.
“With Zoom, the delay would be impossible,” he said.
Hatcher asked Jeremy Landig, who has worked on arrangements for Shepard’s choral program for 15 years, if he had a version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” that might work.
“The only arrangements I knew of were either old-fashioned or barber shop arrangements ,” Landig said. “He said, ‘ Try something new.’ ”
So Landig did just that, infusing a little bit of pop and gospel into the baseball tradition. He kept the writing straightforward, so it would be easy to memorize and perform. Each student used a click track to make sure they were performing at the same tempo when they recorded.
“It was really weird recording my parts solo, because one of my favorite things about singing in a group is hearing all the harmonies
… lock in place,” Comiskey said. “There’s just something about being with such a variety of people and all coming together to create a single product as one. It is such a wonderful feeling.”
Audio/video arranger Tyler Henderson brought it all together for the final video.
“It was a lot of trial and error, figuring out what worked and what didn’t,” he said. “The students all sang together, which made my job easier. I thought it was great.”
Werner said itwas cool to see the video, which can be found on YouTube by searching for the District 218 News and Highlights channel.
“This is the first performance where we’re all seeing how we sound together for the first time,” Werner said.
Hatcher said he wanted to find something that could help the performers connect through singing, despite the social distancing.
“Even if it’s a little musically imperfect, it’s something that can make them feel good about choir,” Hatcher said.
Comiskey said it did just that.
“With all the distance and solo work, it’s easy to feel isolated and unmotivated,” she said. “Having something like this is a good way to start because it shows us that there are ways we can still be together and create something amazing without actually being with each other.”
If that is all the video accomplishes, it will still be a success in Hatcher’s book. But he and his students would prefer its journey ends somewhere between the top and bottom of the seventh inning of a White Sox home game.
Ray Garcia, assistant director of media relations for the White Sox, said the tentative plan is to play Shepard’s video on the last day of the regular season— a 2:10 p.m. game Sept. 27 slated to close a three-game crosstown series with the Chicago Cubs.
“But like everything this season, that is subject to change,” Garcia said.