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Ms. Thomas, Upper School Music
June, 2025
Academic Excellence in the Fine Arts
A Year in Review
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Choir
One of the biggest changes to our curriculum this year was the addition of Harmony, a High School choir, into our school day. This ensemble has grown immensely as we have been able to participate in many activities outside of our regular school concerts. Harmony sang the national anthem at the INCA night at the Kernels baseball game, performed for the attendees of the banquet, and participated in Iowa High School Music Association state events for the first time in our school’s history. The two events in which they participated were State Solo and Ensemble and State Large Group Contest.
A few students took advantage of the cooperation with Marion High School and participated in the show choir “New Creation.” The group was amazing and consistently won grand champion at many of their competitions! A group of middle school students worked with LaSalle and St. Joe’s in the show choir named “Center Stage,” where they also placed very well in competitions in the area.
A hit this year for our middle school students was a “Pops” concert that took place in February. We got to show off a different style that we love to sing!
One of the favorite events of the year was Bass and Treble Fest. A group of 7-9th grade students were selected to go practice and then sing to make a recording to show the process of learning music. A slightly different event occurred for 5th and 6th grade students who prepared music before they went for the day and had a concert in the evening with the ICDA East Central district at Coe College.
Band
The band continues to grow! Throughout the year we have added students to the ensembles, our numbers are bigger than ever! Currently, we have 32 students in our 5th and 6th grade band, and we don’t fit in our room! We started 17 new 4th grade students, and had a few High School students participate in the band, as well.
Students participated in many honor bands outside school. We had students at NEIBA, Marion Honor Band, Coe Honor Band, making a total of 17 students who participated in an outside band event. These events challenged students and some of them are starting to recognize other students in the area.
Another event that was new to us this year was participation in the Xavier Solo and Ensemble Festival. We had several instrumental entries, including students from both upper and lower school in a piano center. Students performed incredibly well, and many received 1+ ratings, the highest possible for this event! We also had one student who participated in IHSMA events at the high school level for band. This student auditioned for All-State, the first in our school to have done so. He also received two 1 ratings on two different instruments at the State Solo and Ensemble Festival.
Speech
Our speech class this year continued to amaze! Although we call it speech, we do a lot of acting. In December, we performed scenes from the play, “Eleemosynary.” This spring we wrote our own scenes for each other in which we performed Mid-May. The creativity flowed, and these students rose to the challenge.