Every fall, the various high school choirs of the South Bend Community School Corporation [SBCSC] come together at one of the high schools to participate in the All-City Choral Festival. This year’s performance was held in the Clay High School Gymnasium on Tuesday, October 9, and featured the choirs from John Adams High School, Clay High School, and Riley High School. Prior to the performance, each school spent time each day over the weeks leading up preparing separately from each other. On the day of the performance, all of the participating schools gathered at Clay for a dress rehearsal of the entire show.

The show itself began with the choirs from all of the high schools performing several songs together. Following this, the Riley High School choir performed the song “Somewhere In the Crowd” from the movie La La Land. After the performance by Riley, there was a performance by all of the female performers from each high school along with an all female a cappella group. They performed “Cups” by Anna Kendrick, which was popularized by the movie Pitch Perfect.

Following this, the Clay High School choir performed a collection of songs which was stellar as well. Similar to the performance by the female a cappella group, a male a cappella group followed the Clay High School performance with a solo song and a song with all of the male performers from each high school.

Next, the John Adams High School show choir performed. The choir sang “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman. This song has been extremely popular ever since the movie was released last December and the Adams choir did it justice. This year, Tessa Griffin became the lead choreographer for the choir and her choreographing skills suited the performance very well.

To conclude the show all of the choirs performed the songs that are associated with each branch of the military. These songs are “Anchors Aweigh” for the U.S. Navy, “The Caissons Go Rolling Along” for the U.S. Army, “The Wild Blue Yonder” for the U.S. Air Force, “The Marines’ Hymn” for the U.S. Marine Corps, and “Semper Paratus” for the U.S. Coast Guard. During each song, audience members who had served in the respective branch of the military were asked to stand in honor of the service to our country.

Overall, the show was an excellent way to showcase the various high school choirs around the city and was a fun way to celebrate fine arts in our schools.