During the last rehearsal on Memorial Day, there was a motorcycle rally. It's tedious work. They had to stand still for hours at a time trying not to cough or to do anything. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep alone required 47 takes. To get in the mood for the songs, the children went on the floor and danced to the music, as younger children would.
Children give each performance something new.
Robert Miller, professor of music education, produced the CD and Tom Ratelle, a sound engineer in the music department, recorded, edited and mixed it. The Research Foundation provided Junda with a grant to have the CD mastered and graduate assistants helped create the CD booklet. A grant from the Teaching Institute partially covered photographs of the choir taken by Kim Bova, a student in the visual arts department, and cover artwork by Eric Spencer, who recently taught illustration courses here and is famous for the logo for Bradley Airport. The CD, which does not as yet have a distributor, is expected to be released April 27. Junda hopes to publish a songbook for the CD, so children can see the musical notation.