Stained glass panels rise above pews filled with silent faces gazing toward the towering, white cross shining on the front wall of the Methodist church as 190 voices fill the room, singing to the world to “let music live.”  

This “Awakening” was the final performance of Choralfest, a show put on by the combined forces of choirs from four Kansas high schools and the Emporia State Chamber Choir and A Capella Choir on March 31 in First United Methodist Church.   

“This was our first large performance with other ensembles this year,” said Michael Brown, Junction City High School’s conductor. “And we try to do things like this every year but after COVID it had been a while, so this was a really great opportunity for our students to just sing with others again and get outside of our own building and just perform with other musicians.” 

The choirs from Junction City High School, Olathe Northwest High School, Chanute High School and Ottawa High School had 30–minute sessions the day of the performance to rehearse and the entire group rehearsed the final piece for less than an hour earlier in the day, according to Joshua Donaldson, interim choral director at ESU.  

“The directors were just phenomenal,” Donaldson said. “I mean, I was really impressed with everybody last night (March 31), but they had all of their students completely prepared on all the music, so I was thinking we were going to do an hour and a half, we were done in like 45 minutes, which was great because all of us (were) ready for a break.” 

 The performances featured a range of songs from “Flower of Beauty” by John Clements to an arrangement of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” by Nathan Howe.  

One piece, sung by the ESU A Cappella Choir, took the singers out into the audience, pleading for someone to look at them, listen to them, help them. 

“¡Ayudame!” is a message from Carlos Cordero about the homelessness in Venezuela. The choir performed the piece scattered through the wooden pews, some breaking off in the middle of the piece to plead in Spanish, “Look at me, listen to me, I am suffering, I can’t see, I am hungry, I am thirsty, I am sick, help me.” 

“It was really interesting,” Donaldson said. “Especially with what’s going on in the world with Ukraine and Russia, one of my students, she said, this became more powerful because she said ‘I was watching the news and there were refugees from Ukraine’ and she said ‘they literally said the exact words of please just help me, I’m hungry, would you listen to me.’” 

With a bass drum thundering in the background and speakers reaching out to the audience, the piece was made to make people uncomfortable and bring to light the things in the real world that are often overlooked, according to Kinsey Emery, junior music education major and president of choir.   

“Right up to the concert I would cry every single rehearsal just because it is such a powerful piece,” Emery said. 

While the performance was a chance to bring choirs from around the region together to perform, Donaldson wanted to leave audiences with a message they could take with them. 

“Great art should spark a dialogue of some sort,” Donaldson said. “And that’s what I was really hoping to achieve with our program last night.”