All Campus choir sings for class final

About 35 students took the stage wearing black from head to toe. Suits, skirts and dresses filled the stage of Recital Hall.

The co-ed All-Campus Choir preformed its final recital 7 p.m. Sunday.

One of the two conductors, Jack Templeton, a masters student in choral conducting, stepped onto a wooden conductor’s box. He gave a quick nod to the choir from his foot-high podium and starting waving his arms over his head, guiding the choir through the notes.

“Some people had really good high school music programs,” Reed Spencer, a masters student in choral conducting and conductor of the All-Campus Choir, said. “This is an outlet for them.”

The All-Campus Choir is a free, one-credit course offered through the Jacobs School of Music to non-music majors.

“Everyone loves it,” Spencer said. “It is non-audition, non-exclusive.”

Spencer said although the choir sounds great now, he would love to have 70 students enroll in the course in the future.

Spencer said they teach choral skills among other singing techniques. Although previous knowledge is appreciated, it isn’t required.

Two songs passed and Templeton stepped off the conductor podium and switched places with Spencer in the choir.

“We just share,” Spencer said. “We are both students and we learn from each other, too.”

Starting next semester, the class will be offered on Tuesday nights for two hours, instead of twice a week for an hour as it has been in the past.

“It is a lot of fun,” junior and soprano Allie Gabbard said. “It is not a lot of commitment. You get to relax, get into it and enjoy yourself.”

Gabbard said some people practice outside of class as they feel they need to, but the only rehearsals are during class time.

Gabbard is a music minor, but she said most people in the All-Campus Choir are not affiliated with Jacobs.

“Most people are interested in music with no connection to the music school,” Gabbard said.

The All-Campus Choir sang nine classical songs. Gabbard said her favorite was “Locus iste,” a Latin song that was sung a cappella. It was only one of two songs sung without the piano accompanist, Jaeeun Kim.

“It is a good chance to sing again,” Gabbard said. “You get to go sing with people who enjoy singing.”

The two conductors stepped forward. They motioned toward the choir, bowed and left the stage.