Student musicians and performers from all over Henrico County participated in the Henrico County Black History Month Concert on Feb. 26. This concert was unique because it didn’t require auditions, allowing a diverse group of high school students from various backgrounds and skill levels to participate.
“The vocal music departments at Deep Run participate, so if you’re a senior who’s been to All-State and Honors Choir, you can be in this concert. If you are taking the chorus for the very first time, you can be in this concert,” chorus teacher and director Amy El-Khouri said.
This concert is annual, beginning in 2012, and has been performed every year, except for COVID years.
“This started because we do not have an all-county event at the high school choir level for Henrico County. There’s all-county middle school choir orchestra and band, there’s high school band, there’s high school orchestra for all counties, but we don’t have a high school choir event,” El-Khouri said.
With a variety of people from different schools participating together, the concert uses a guest conductor for their performances.
“We bring in somebody who is not one of us, so the students won’t have at any moment their teacher won’t be the one directing the whole choir,” El-Khouri said.
These guest conductors have come from all kinds of musical communities within the Richmond area. The guest conductor this year was Dr. Antonio Hunt from Randolph-Macon College.
“We’ve brought in church musicians, we’ve brought in collegiate conductors to put the whole thing together,” El-Khouri said.
The conductors set the tone for the whole performance, sending directions to the groups at all participating schools.
“They do the programming, they pick the repertoire that we’ll do and then they help make it all work. They send us conductor’s notes, and they send us how fast the pieces will be,” El-Khouri said.
Since El-Khouri does not have conducting responsibilities, she enjoys seeing her students perform from a different perspective.
“My favorite thing is [it’s] one of the few events of the year where I actually get to sit back in the audience as a teacher, as a parent, and actually watch my students sing. It’s just really delightful to get to see them, standing with people that they’ve never met before,” El-Khouri said.
The concert was recorded live and can be viewed on the HCPS Youtube channel.
