“Alright everyone, my name is Sue, and I will be your tour guide for your stay in England. Now I know you are all very tired from your flight, but there will be no sleeping on this coach. My goal is to entertain you enough to keep from snoozing. So I’m sorry if I have to be a bossy boots, but I just want to ensure that all of you have a good time while you are here.”
This is how the
European Tour began, and staying entertained was never an issue. From June 8-17, the combined choirs of Darlington and Cartersville High School traveled together through England and France where they performed at four venues, ranging from the venerable Église Saint Séverin in Paris and St. Luke’s Methodist, a quaint, little church in Rochester, England.
“Presenting concerts on tours like this allows our students to experience first hand all of the feelings associated with performing outside of their comfort zone, whether that comfort zone is the physical location or type of audience,” said Dan Bishop, choral director and chairman of Darlington’s fine arts department. “They learn that each audience responds differently to their selections and that they need to make the necessary adjustments to better reach each listener. They also sense the need to make vocal adjustments to better utilize the acoustical environment in which they are performing. We always hear that practice makes perfect, but I can tell you that practicing without performing will get you no where in the musical discipline. They must go hand in hand.”
The group, led by Bishop and choral director Jim Stanley from Cartersville, performed a repertoire of songs (both secular and non-secular) including “Seasons of Love” from “Rent,” “Waitin’ for The Light To Shine” from “Big River,” the popular tune “Homeward Bound,” Sherri Porterfield’s “Agnus Dei” and Antonio Lotti’s “Cum Sancto Spiritu.”
“At Église Saint Séverin, we were able to participate in a French Catholic mass, which was pretty cool,” said Cami D’Anzi, a rising sophomore at Cartersville High. “The service was all spoken in French, and as a Catholic, it was a very unique experience for me.”
While on tour, students visited various attractions along the way, from the vivacious college town of Oxford, England, to the historical site of Versailles in Paris. In England, the group saw Blenheim Palace, the British Museum, Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey, to name a few. In France, they saw Notre Dame de Paris, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.
While the objective of the European Tour was to perform and entertain audiences, students agree that they learned and discovered the most from the cultural experiences they had while living abroad for 10 days.
*Junior Anisha Chandra contributed to this article.
