Once in a lifetime experience for Sisler choir

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This article was published 26/05/2017 (3342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hundreds of Winnipeg students joined the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and proved that together they could wow an audience.

Sisler High School was one of the eight schools in Manitoba that were selected to participate in the MTS Rising Stars Concert on May 18 at the Centennial Concert Hall. Two hundred and fifty students joined the orchestra and performed the 24 Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana classical conducted by WSO’s music director Alexander Mickelthwate. 

Grade 12 students Mae Soriano and Hannah Santillan and Grade 10 Savannah Shersty were among the 36 Sisler choir members who sang with the WSO.

The girls agreed that blending so many different voices was challenging, but to see different people come together for a common goal was their favourite part.

“We all had different backgrounds coming in, but the point of music is really bringing everyone together through a common thing,” Soriano said.

“(A choir) is where we can all agree and have some mutual understanding. It’s more of the connection that you have with music, and it shows how music can bring people together to create something beautiful,” Shersty said.

WSO started organizing the concert a year in advance. However, the students only got to rehearse together three times a month before the event and only got to sing with the orchestra the day before.

The girls said there are several differences between singing in a school choir and a mass choir.

“We are used to each other’s sounds, and we can blend into each other’s sound easier because we’re a small group,” Shersty said. “But when we were with the orchestra and the choir, we had to blend with the instruments and have the timing right. When you’re in a mass choir, you have to not just blend with a couple of people that are next to you, but you have to try and blend with everybody as a whole.”

Every year, MTS Rising Stars Concert alternated between a band, choir and youth orchestra with the purpose of bringing together some of the most talented students in Manitoba. The performance showcases the musical talents of young people in the province and offers a unique educational experience as they perform with the orchestra. 

MTS Rising Stars is an opportunity for high school students and several emerging university-aged musicians to have a performance with the full WSO, performing a full-scale repertoire. WSO’s education and community engagement manager Brent Johnson said this is an experience the students will never forget.

“What we want for them is that this is a tremendous experience and hopefully they will want to come back and engage with us again,” he continued. “We hope that the memory of the impact of this event will keep them remembering WSO.”

“What really impressed me was their confidence. These are students who are really passionate about music who are willing to put in a lot of hard work and are committed to it. They’ve invested all this time and energy in learning it, and they have once in a lifetime experience.”

Soriano added students she didn’t know were supportive of her and each other. Shersty said she is a shy person but singing with a large number of people helped her mix well with the mass choir.

“I became more outgoing and more comfortable with people I don’t know,” Shersty continued. 

“The goal for music is generally to bring people together, and music did bring me closer to people, and it made me more outgoing.”