After conducting 95 of Michigan’s finest female singers, Mandy Mikita Scott said it was “like driving a Ferrari.” That’s how good the singers were, and how well they responded to her conducting, when Scott directed a statewide honors choir in a recent concert at DeVos Hall.
Director of choirs at Rockford High School, Scott was chosen by her colleagues across the state to conduct the Michigan State SSAA (soprano and alto) Honors Choir on Jan. 18. The performance was part of the Michigan Music Conference put on by the Michigan School Vocal Music Association.
Scott’s choir, and two others also performing at the conference, included seven Rockford students: Kevin Sinclair, Austin Gridely, Cash Maciel, Eve Hillman, Hannah Koelewyn, Katherine Parker and Michaela Jones.
Scott, in her 11th year of teaching and sixth at Rockford, selected a wide range of songs to perform. They included Finnish folk music and an arrangement of a blues song by Huddie Ledbetter (widely known as Lead Belly). In rehearsal she played greetings to the choir recorded by some of the composers.
Scott and her husband, Jed, director of the male ensemble Rockford Aces, will take 34 students on a tour of Europe this summer, culminating in the World Choir Games in Riga, Latvia.
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