PARKER ELEMENTARY CHOIR AT THE “LIFT UP” CONCERT.
The Houston Chamber Choir has recognized three of the finest school choirs from the Greater Houston area in its annual “Hear the Future” concert for over two decades.
With its digital stage set, the tradition will go on, but this year, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble will highlight the artistry of young singers while turning the spotlight on their teachers, who have navigated pandemic-driven challenges to continue empowering them to share their voices with confidence and grace.
In “A Time to Lift Up,” the third performance in its virtual season, the Houston Chamber Choir will encourage music educators to remember the good days and persevere through the tough ones by looking back through the history of its invitational choral festival. The free concert will be released at noon on Jan. 31, after which it will be available through August via the organization’s new viewing platform, the Houston Chamber Choir Digital Stage.
Lasting just over 30 minutes, the program will showcase segments of past performances by schools of all levels, featuring works like “The Storm Is Passing Over” by Parker Elementary School, “Shouting, Whispering Sea” by Spring Oaks Middle School, “Benggong” by Obra D. Tompkins High School and more.
Each of these excerpts will be preceded by a recently recorded introduction from the particular choir director at that given time. For the previously mentioned schools, these influential individuals are Marianna Parnas-Simpson, Greg Morgan and Christin Reinartz, respectively. Other teachers to be acknowledged include Jennifer Gallagher, Deidre Douglas, Matthew Perez, Connie Horton, Cyndie Lowry and Amy Moore.
“We want this to be an opportunity to help renew the spirits of the teachers, renew their passion and love of teaching, the feeling that brought them into the profession in the first place,” founder and artistic director Robert Simpson says in a phone interview, while his wife and founding member of the Houston Chamber Choir, ParnasSimpson, gives a virtual lesson in the background. “It’s as if, who’s caring for the caregiver?”
In the upcoming program, Simpson estimates that about two dozen schools will be represented in one way or another. The selected recordings will be interspersed with brief, unifying and uplifting messages from a number of teachers to their colleagues, as well as inspirational videos that depict creative workarounds for these still uncertain times. For example, the choir at Caney Creek High School, under the direction of Lauren Robertson and Maura Brown, staged a drive-in concert with a screen set up in a parking lot.
“The teachers have been remarkable in offering some really satisfying experiences to their students,” says Simpson, who works with educational consultants and former high school choral directors Sally Schott and Eddie Quaid every year to identify the three school choirs that are deserving of an invitation to participate in “Hear the Future.”
Traditionally, these groups perform individually before joining together onstage with the Houston Chamber Choir for one final piece. The professional ensemble will not make an appearance in this concert, however, allowing the focus to truly remain on the city’s resilient teachers, Simpson explains.
“These performances will remind us, as they do every year, even under normal circumstances, just what remarkable music is being made in our schools, from elementary through high school,” he says. “I know firsthand just how tiring, how discouraging, in some cases, and certainly how exhausting the first half of this year has been for teachers. We want to let them feel more than the appreciation, the real dedication we have and the recognition that they are in fact our heroes.”