‘Tis a time of joyfulness and a merry time of year!
The Madrigals present Weston Henry with a giant spork. The gift was a symbol for several memories and inside jokes throughout the group’s performance week/preparation.
Amongst all the chaos of slowly moving towards normality in 2021, the S.H.S. Madrigals had the opportunity to perform in front of an audience once again. Choir director Weston Henry led the group and was graced with seniors Paige Geil as queen, Logan Moreno as king, along with Jenica Francis and Sophie Shaw as jesters. The dinner is a holiday event that takes place every year at Bethel Church; students audition and spend months in preparation for this performance.
In 2020, the dinner was performed as a recorded version from the S.H.S auditorium, displayed on NFHS. Moving closer to the normal standard this year, the group opened the performance up to the public. Shaw points out the biggest difference from 2020 to 2021: being in person.
Shaw expressed, “Being in person for the dinner made it a lot more fun for the madrigals and the audience. We were able to get live reactions from the audience and talk to them… this helped us stay energized during our performance.”
Other members share similar feelings with Shaw. By being in front of an audience, the madrigals had a chance to enhance their performance more than ever before.
It is certainly great to reflect on all the triumphs of this group musically, but they did not come without their hardships. The group spent over twenty hours in preparation for the dinners.
Sophomore Ben Boze shared, “The hardest part to prepare was memorizing like 15 different songs.” The madrigals memorized a fair amount of songs, along with the memorization of a script and improve opportunities during mingling time.
While the madrigals are the main focus of the dinners, a group of talented younger students almost stole the show! In auditions, a student can audition to be a madrigal or a chamber. The chambers are students training to be madrigals. The chambers prepare and serve the physical dinner, as well as have a concert in between set changes. Junior Anna Kuhns was a chamber lady who played a main role in the dinner.
Kuhns reveals, “The most difficult part was handling the dessert portion of the dinner.” These chambers are truly the secret behind the success of the dinners.
The dinners seemed to run smoothly to the public but to the students who participated, there were several goofy moments.
Junior Kiara Olinger mentioned, “My favorite memory was during performance week when Christian’s pants fell down during a song!”
The madrigal group has students from each high school grade; twelve seniors, six juniors, two sophomores, and four freshmen. Whilst the group mainly consisted of upperclassmen, there were a select few freshmen granted a chance to participate. Cole Stumpenhorst was one of four freshmen students in the madrigal group. These students learned from their fellow group members and created memories that will never be forgotten.
Stumpenhorst stated, “The best part about madrigals as a first year was probably the upper class men group I got to work with. I will miss the seniors next year because I feel like they contributed the most to the group’s amazing performance.”
The madrigals performances provide a perfect opportunity to get into the holiday spirit and are the perfect combination of joy, fun, and community. The madrigals sing it best… It truly is the merriest time of the year!
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