 Welcome to In the Studio. I am your sometime host, Matt Blake. And joining me today to talk about Davis Children's Corral is Luanne Higgs. Hi. Hello. How are you today, Luanne? I'm good. Thank you. And you go by Lu? I do. Excellent. Thanks for joining me in the studio. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So start by telling me more about Davis Children's Corral, please. Okay. Well, the Davis Children's Corral is a Davis institution. It's been around for 22 years. It was started by Don and Rachel Kessler. They created a 501-3C, a nonprofit called Valley Artist Productions. And within that, they created the Davis Brass Ensemble, the Davis Corral, and the Davis Children's Corral. And so Rachel Kessler is kind of the mother of this organization. I'm currently the artistic director. And Rachel still works with some of the children. We have three levels of kids in the choir. And we have young kids. They're kindergarteners, I think kindergarteners, first graders, second graders. And they go to her house on Mondays once a week from 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock and sing. They do play games, musical games, do rounds, just learn a little bit about singing. And then when they get a little older, and that'll be third grade to ninth grade, I get these kids. And we put them in two groups as well. We have the third graders to about the fifth graders. And it depends on maturity level as well. It's not just an age cutoff or a grade cutoff. So the younger kids rehearse with me on Mondays and Thursdays from 4.15 to 5.15. And this is September through May. And the older kids, they rehearse with me only once a week. And that's on Thursdays from 4.15 to 6.25 with a break, with snacks, all important snacks. And so we have a little break, a 15-minute break where they can play. And that's at the Davis Community Church, is where we rehearse. And the level twos and level threes are basically a combined choir. Older kids will have maybe one song by themselves, a little bit more difficult. But they're a combined choir. And we all learn the same songs for the most part. And we perform, that's our major goal, is to perform in the area. And we perform a lot. So we're an asset of Davis. The City of Davis uses us a couple times a year just to make clear that kids can do one semester at a time. They don't have to do the whole year. It is a commitment. They should come to practice. Although I do work, with some kids have soccer or robotics or whatever else they've got. I work with that, but they do need to come to practice at least once a week. And I give them rehearsal tracks so they can rehearse. And on their own, they often have little parties and rehearse. But we work with, we perform in the winter season. We start at the farmer's market. We'll be out there rain or shine. And last year it was rain. And then we also perform, we have our own performance, which is held at the Davis Community Church. And we sing our full repertoire there, also with solos. We do have, we have had, luckily, a wonderful pianist accompanist named Oliver Steisberg. He has graduated from high school. From high school. Yeah, so he is moving on. And so we are coming, we are in the market for a pianist. Hope, you know, we would prefer somebody in high school or in junior high that can fill that bill so they can get experience. That's how I started my accompanying career as I was accompanying for Rachel Kessler's voice students. And it's good to have that kind of experience. And so where was I, there we go. You are very far down the road. If I don't, if you don't mind, maybe we take it back one step. What is a choir? A choir. Oh, what a great question. A choir is a group of people that sing together. Okay. So it's not necessary to have the accompaniment. They can just sing acapella. No. In fact this year I'm going to be working more on acapella because I don't have an accompanist at this point. All right. I am an accompanist. I can do that myself. But I, I, we're going to be working a little bit more on acapella, which takes a little bit more work on the choir's part. So we're all going to be singing together. That also means getting along and learning how to be respectful to each other and respecting each other's art. Because singing is so personal. It's when you play a piano or a trumpet, you're playing an instrument. But we are our instruments. And so it's very personal. It's very personal to sing and often very scary. Sure. That said, we sing together. That's not as scary. But I also have opportunities for solos and duets. And I will be doing that for the Christmas concert. I was talking about our concerts that we do in the fall. We also go to Carlton Senior Center. Oh, sure. And we sing over there. And Atria, we've sung over there. And we sing at the Capitol Rotunda in Sacramento. Yeah, that's a fun outing. And where else do we? Oh, this is a big one. Is that we also are employed by the Davis, not employed, but we are used by the Davis Choral. And the Davis Choral, whenever they needed children's choir, we fit that bill. And so last December, we were asked to provide their children's choir for the St. Nicholas cantata by Benjamin Britton, which is hard. It's really tough. And I actually had a subset of the choir, and we rehearsed for that separately on a Sunday afternoon or something. These were volunteers. And they did a great job. They did a great job. And I was so proud of them. They were very difficult. We had a boy soloist from our choir who sang. He was the young St. Nicholas. They did a great job. And we will be singing with the Davis Choral. That's the adult choir headed by Allison Skinner here in town. And we will be singing for, it's a, as I understand it, a family-friendly concert on December 8th, 2019, coming up. So if I'm understanding it correctly, just from a parent's perspective, it sounds to me like it's pretty low barrier to entry. And you're going to be learning teamwork as a child, not as a parent, although the parents probably learned some teamwork, too. Snacks. You're going to, snacks are important. We all know the snacks are important, but you're going to learn teamwork and a little confidence being on stage, but with those other kids so that maybe you're not, you're not all alone doing a solo until you're ready to do the solo. And I noticed on your website, what is the website again? It's dcchor.org, so it's d-c-h-o-r-dot-o-r-g. All right, dcchor.org. But I noticed on there that you have some auditions for the kids that are above the kindergarten level or the younger level. We call them auditions, basically, let me tell you and our audience that I accept everyone. I am inclusive. I want people to come and sing. I think it's important that children have some kind of self-expression. In Davis, there's so many organizations for kids to do that, and that's great. And so this is one of them. But I will welcome people with disabilities if you're autistic or Asperger's or whatever physical disabilities come and sing in my choir. And I want not only those kids to feel included and valued, and I want the other kids to get to know those kids. And so self-expression is important, and it's a lifelong thing. It starts when you're a kid. I have friends now that I had in junior high from singing. And it's just a very fulfilling thing. And it's a good way just to have a little release from the academic world. So getting back to the low barriers to entry, so it sounds like everyone is welcome, and the audition is really sort of a voice placement more than an audition. Voice placement, thank you. I'm there to teach them how to sing. Some kids will come in with perfect pitch, though they'll be able to play instruments and read music. And some kids won't have done anything and won't have any kind of pitch, but I'm there to teach them that's my job. So some teamwork and some music and some self-confidence, and it's one hour a week of practice, one hour and ten minutes, two hours a week. Yeah, so Monday and Thursday for the smaller kids, the Monday rehearsals will go. A little slower for them, for the younger kids. Then it'll be 415 to 625 for the big kids just once a week. Got you. Okay, that is two hours, not one. Right. You are correct. Yeah. So you learn a little math as well, which is great. We do learn to read music, or I try to introduce that, especially to the older kids, because I'm looking at them to get into the high school choirs, which are auditioned. Okay, they're competitive. They are competitive, and so we work on the entrance exams, what they need to know. They sing their solos that they're required to sing at the high school, so that's for the older kids. Okay. And so I start introducing that and just getting them used to that process as well. All right. So really an expressed interest to join the choir, two hours a week of practice, and then the around town performances, what's that schedule look like? Yeah. December's pretty busy. Sure. In the spring, it's not as bad. Spring, bad is not the word to use, but it's not as busy. Spring is, May we have a Mother's Day concert. We sing at the Memorial Day observance at the Davis Cemetery. We sang at St. John's in Woodland, it's a retirement center. We were asked by a church to participate in their services, and so we sang at their service and then gave a concert afterwards. So it was a little less spaced out, but the fall can get a little busy. I do want to mention too that I am recruiting for folks to join, and we have a retreat. This year it's going to be September 6th through 8th, we go up in the mountains. So we leave Friday night, I think, and get there, and then we're done Sunday afternoon. Parents can come, and we need parents, we'll need at least six parents to be in the cabins because it is overnight. But we rehearse quite a bit, so it's kind of a big kickstart of the season. So I would like people, if they want to join, join by then because we want you to come to the retreat. Alright, and so just tell us how to join. Go to our website, and I'm hoping they're DCC Core, DCCHOR.org, go to our website, and there's the information there. There's me, you can get my information. I also have an assistant director slash business manager, her name's Tanya Kumar, and she handles the collecting of stipends. This is, we do require a stipend each month, or for the semester, or for the year. Also we have concert dress, and she gets those ordered, and we have sweatshirts and all that kind of stuff, and music and folders, and so she handles most of that. She does a terrific job, and I couldn't live without her. So yeah, it's a lot of work. It sounds like a lot of work, and I think from what I have seen, it's definitely work that is paying off, and we do have a clip that we can run as we end the show today. And I believe it's, don't forget to button up your overcoat. Button up your overcoat. The kids really like that. I did want to mention quickly that we do a huge variety of music, because we're kids. You know, we want to be exposed to a lot of stuff. We do classical, we do pop, we do jazz, pop meaning show tunes, and this is one they really enjoyed. This is one they really liked. Alright, excellent. So if what you see appeals to you, viewer, go check out the website and join the Davis Children's Corral, and if you would like to accompany something like this, and you are a good pianist, give them a call as well. It sounds like we can use you here in Davis for all these wonderful shows. And with that, thank you for joining me in the studio, and thank you, Lou, for joining me in the studio. Thank you for having me. And this is the Davis Children's Corral singing, Don't Forget to Button Up Your Overcoat. It's snowing, and the wind is blowing, and they said, all with the thermal.