Millburn Middle School Presents Winter Chorus Concert

The Millburn Middle School choruses will perform classical selections, show tunes, holiday favorites, and songs from around the world in their annual Winter Chorus Concert at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 18, in the MS Auditorium.

Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

The program will open with the Sixth Grade Chorus singing a winter favorite, Jingle Bells, featuring soloists Shmide Price and Sarah Burn.  A holiday selection sung in Yiddish, Nes Gadol Haya Sham, will follow, after which the chorus will sing The Snow Has a Song.  The sixth graders will close their portion of the program with Jazzy Saint Nick.

Singers Henry Dench, David Jordan, Jonathon Silverman, Christine Yang, Caitlin Caulfield, Megan Pan, and Maanya Tandon will be featured in Gloria Festiva, the first selection of the Seventh Grade Chorus.  Two folk songs will be sung by the seventh graders.  The first is an Estonian song entitled Metsa Telegramm, (“The Woodpecker’s Warning”), and the second,The Bird’s Courting Song, is Appalachian American, in which Rachel Serna-Brown, Leah Green, David Jordan, Kate Parker-Lentz, Jonathan Silverman and Stephanie Tom will be featured singers.

The Eighth Grade Chorus will begin with the first of three contrasting selections, the beautiful Hebrew selection Bashana Haba’ah, (“Next Year, When Peace Shall Come”), then a German carol, Kling, Glöckchen, Kling (“Ring, Little Bells, Ring”) will follow.  Next will come a selection entitled Do You Hear the People Sing? from the Broadway hit and soon-to-be-released film “Les Misérables.”   Then the seventh grade girls will join the eight grade girls to sing the English favorite Danny Boy to complete this portion of the program.

The MMS Select Chorus will close the evening with a selection written by the Canadian poet/author/composer Leonard Cohen.   This piece, Hallelujah, was originally written in 1984, but has received more recent exposure by its inclusion in the DreamWorks animated film “Shrek.”  Featured will be singers Natalie Aris, Eloise Burn, Kyle Hoberman, Ila Kaul, Emily Mattlin, Miranda Nimmer, Nick Ryan, Luke Wroblewski, and Audrey Yan.

Student accompanists for the choruses are eighth graders Kevin Lin and Adam Liu, seventh graders Corinne Au, Christine Cai, and Wicong Wu, and sixth graders Eric Wang and James Samson.  Also featured will be instrumentalists Victoria Mak  and Corinne Au, violin, Kevin Lin, clarinet, Jon Rosen, cello, Noah Pascal, bass, Jenna Israel, flute, and David O’Sullivan and Caitlin Caulfield, percussion. Mr. John Conte provides additional piano accompaniment for the choruses.

The Sixth Grade Chorus is under the direction of Ms. Elizabeth M. Bewie, and Mr. David Huneryager conducts the Seventh Grade, Eighth Grade, and Select Choruses.