Six singers to perform in State Honor Choir

Six members of the Sweetwater County Children’s Honor Choir, sponsored by Sweetwater Board of Cooperative Educational Services, have been selected by their conductor to perform in the 2015 Wyoming ACDA All State Children’s Honor Choir.

Jadyn Fernandez, Kristin Lee, Maggie Smith, and Catie Spann have been selected to perform Saturday in Gillette.

Also selected for this honor choir, but unable to attend are Trinity Chrisawn, and Sandra Figenser.

The 135-voice choir will be under the direction of Dr. Thomas G. Hardaway III. He is the artistic director of the Texas Children’s Choir and has trained and directed children’s choirs for more than 40 years.

Hardaway began studying music as a chorister at the Washington National Cathedral, studying voice and composition as a youngster.

He majored in organ performance as an undergraduate at the University of Texas.

He subsequently earned his M.D. at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas before completing residency training in pediatrics, general psychiatry, and child psychiatry at medical centers in the U.S. Army.

Hardaway practiced pediatrics, and later adult and child psychiatry, all over the world, including Germany, Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC), Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and UC San Francisco.

He served as Chief of Mental Health Services at Fort Hood, Texas, in Europe, and at BAMC, and wrapped up his 31-year Army career as the child psychiatry consultant to the surgeon general. He retired from the Army as a colonel in 2005.

Included in the repertoire for the 2015 All State Wyoming ACDA Children’s Honor Choir performance will be: “Song for the Unsung Hero”, by Pamela and Joseph Martin; “Pie Jesu”, arranged by Mary Lynn Lightfoot; “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, arranged by Mac Huff; “A Little Curl”, from The Nursery Rhyme Cantata, arranged by Nick Page; “I Love Ragtime (with Ja-Da)”, arranged by Kirby Shaw; and, “Schafe Konnen sicher Weiden”, by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Five of the songs will be sung by the All State Choir and one of the pieces will be sung jointly by the host choirs.

Teddi Smotherman, and the Gillette Children’s Choir will host the Wyoming 2015 ACDA Children’s Honor Choir event.

The Rock Springs singers are working with Sarah Wessel and Beth Chapman-Smith to have the musical selections fully prepared and memorized before journeying to Gillette with their parents.