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Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
This morning my guest is K-12 Music Teacher and Director of Vocal Music at Ironwood Area Schools Darren Schmidt.
He's here this morning to discuss the upcoming performance by Accent at the historic Ironwood Theater on May 16th.
Darren Schmidt has served as K-12 music teacher at Luther L. Wright since 2019.
He has a long background as a school administrator and teacher.
He received his Bachelor of Music and Music Education from Western Michigan University, as well as his Masters in Music and Wind Conducting from Indiana University.
As director, Darren has revived Accent and the choirs with great success.
Over the last couple years, the choirs from Luther L. Wright have successfully competed at state choir festivals, earning first division ratings in show choir, concert choir, and acapella.
Darren has also performed for Theatre North, including a terrific performance as Baron von Trapp and their 2023 production of Sound of Music.
Good morning, Darren.
Good morning.
It's
a
pleasure to be here.
Yeah, welcome to NR range.
So you became director of vocal music at Ironwood area schools in 2019.
And what changes have you seen since then?
Since 2019, we've tried to diversify the choir quite a bit.
There is only one choir at the high school.
And that's a fairly recent change for people who have been around town for a while.
It used to be a more traditional setup.
where there was a concert choir that was the backbone of the program.
And then show choir was an extra fun thing that you did on top of that.
And as enrollment has declined at the school, we got to the point where we're down to one choir.
And when I came into Ironwood in 2019, it turned out that one choir was accent the show choir.
And I just thought it was important for music education reasons to diversify that so that we were seeing different styles of music to broaden their education.
Okay, so you had the one choir and you're trying to fit in music from different programs into the one choir with the group of kids that you were working with.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, excellent.
And so when I mentioned in the introduction, what are the differences between show choir and concert choir and acapella?
Sure.
Concert choir is, you can think of it as singing concert style music, classical music.
That's where you put on the robes and stand on risers and it's much
more traditional kind of music.
Show choir is literally singing and dancing.
There's usually a lot of choreography.
That repertoire tends to be Broadway songs or popular songs.
Contemporary acapella is the newest genre out there.
You can think of acapella groups like Take Six, Pentatonix, Impact.
A lot of groups that you see on these choir competition TV shows would be acapella choirs.
And then we're also doing some vocal jazz as well.
So you could think of Manhattan transfer, the high lows, singers unlimited, New York voices, that kind of style.
And we do a little bit of everything and the kids do a remarkable job of switching from style to style to style and still holding their own.
Yeah, and when you're talking about choir concert and some of those jazz arrangements, you're talking about some really intricate harmonies that can be difficult to pick out with your ear and sing, particularly acapella.
How do you work with the kids to dial in on that?
We will make individual practice tracks for every part because it
It takes a long time.
Like if we were just sitting learning parts at the piano, it would take forever.
So we do ask the students to do some preparation on their own.
We put those practice tracks up on Google Classroom.
We always have homework and accent is what I tell the kids.
If you can't sing your part very well, then you have homework.
You've got to get on those practice tracks and practice your part.
But you're right about the intricacy of the harmonies.
So we'll be singing a vocal jazz arrangement.
of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry About a Thing on our concert on the 16th.
It goes into as many as six parts.
pretty frequently.
So a lot going on.
Yeah, tackling some Stevie territory in general, no matter what you're doing is he's a mutant.
He's just a next level
human being.
Absolutely a genius.
That's incredible.
What else can folks expect at the concert on May 16th?
So we're going to have a variety of music.
So the first thing we would want folks to understand is that we kind of call this our showcase concert and it's often senior showcase.
We have 15
in the group right now and ten of them are seniors.
So there will only be a few full choir songs and most of the concerts will be solos duets, small groups that feature the seniors.
We're going to have everything from old fashioned stuff, like we're singing a jazz arrangement of the Ben and Goodman Sing Sing Sing.
We've got Noah Hofstad singing some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific.
So some real old war horses all the way up to much more modern
contemporary things like they're going to sing the acapella arrangement of cheap thrills that was featured in the movie Pitch Perfect 3.
And then kids are allowed to like pick whatever they want as long as we can find some sheet music.
to give to the band.
So it's going to be quite a variety.
Yeah, a wide variety of music featuring songs picked by the kids.
That's right.
And then Noah, he's been an accent since junior high, right?
Yeah, that's exactly
right.
Losing your captain.
Yeah, this will be Noah's sixth year in accent.
It's a special situation.
He showed himself to be mature and talented and dedicated in the seventh grade.
And very frankly,
We were short on guys in the group, and so it ended up being a really, really good match.
And so this is a real opportunity for people to see a lot of the pieces that these kids are taking to the different choir festivals.
That's exactly right.
So Sing Sing Sing and the arrangement of Don't You Worry About a Thing, we sang that at a vocal jazz festival.
at the Wausau campus of UW-Stevens Point.
We sang that for a professional group called Take 6 and we got some feedback from Take 6 on our performance.
So when you talk about the changes that have happened in the program, we've really tried to
do our very best to take this group from a really solid regional show choir to something that we're really trying to push world-class and we're trying to expose them to professionals.
We're trying to expose them to groups that are much better than they are because we have 200 people in our high school.
I mean there are some powerhouse schools downstate because they have such a huge talent pool and so it's it's been really fun to take these kids on this journey.
Yeah, I've watched the program develop over the last few years have been going to the spring concerts and the Christmas concerts and it just really has been an incredible rise and it speaks to your work with the kids and the dedication of those kids because Accent is something of a big tradition here.
Yeah, so many people have come through that program and have fond memories of it.
It sure was it was founded in 1991 by the choir director at that time
and that's considered old for some people,
right?
Well, you know
to have a standing show choir of, you know, over 30 years, that's, that's a pretty good run.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it just sort of goes to show up here, something that a music teacher of mine taught me in college where on the first day of class he, he asked us, he says, what do you think separates you sitting here at Middle Tennessee State University from kids sitting in a composition class in Harvard?
The way he answered it was the only thing that separates you is the fact that those kids at Harvard.
think they deserve to be there.
You know,
and sense of entitlement.
Yeah.
And so it just goes to show that when you're working with these kids, if they've got, well, if they've got the talent.
You know, and they've got the drive.
It doesn't matter whether you're living in Ironwood Township or whether you're down near Madison.
You know, when you pair up with the right teacher and the right group of folks, really magical, wonderful things can happen and you don't have to be in from one of these fancy places to really kind of, I don't want to say be competitive, but perform at a high level.
Yeah.
Oh, I agree with that completely.
You know, it's the reason why I've been in this job for seven years is that, you know, I like to see the kids stick with it.
I don't mind being the underdog.
It gives us a little something to get hungry for.
And yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, I myself thrive on low expectations as well.
Low
expectations.
So the concert's coming up on May 16th.
It'll be at 7 p.m.
at the historic Ironwood Theater.
We'll get a chance to see the senior class.
How's it looking for accent when you're losing 10 folks like that?
Because I know you get these kids singing from kindergarten on up.
You have spring concerts and they're in groups.
And so how's recruiting looking for accent in the next couple of years?
So it's still pretty promising.
So our middle school choir this year is really, really strong.
They received all first division ratings at the concert festival that we held in Hurley back in February.
A number of strong eighth graders, several
strong boys, which is great, because that's always a challenge is to get the gentleman up and singing.
You know, it's a lot like a sports team, you know, sports teams have ups and downs, you know, nobody wins the championship every year, right?
And so
players filter out new ones come in that need development.
Right.
So for sure next year is a rebuilding year.
There isn't any way around that, but that middle school choir is pretty strong.
And so I feel like the future is still solid.
Love to hear it.
You're doing a great job, Darren.
Oh, thank you.
I really appreciate that.
Thanks for coming in and talking to us this morning on in our range and I hope everybody breaks their legs on May 16th and as well as you're heading down for, you're heading down to the state choir festival this Friday.
So this Friday is a state soul and ensemble festival.
So it'll be instrumentalists and vocalists.
So we're not taking full choir down.
We're taking five solo acts vocally.
And then we have a sep-tet that's singing and then there are a number of band events too.
Well, we're all cheering them on as they head down there and can't wait to see the show on May 16th.
Super.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks for joining us this morning, Darren.
Have a good day.
Thanks.
My guest this week was Darren Schmidt, K-12 Music Teacher and Director of Vocal Music at Ironwood Area Schools.
The Accent Spring Concert will be held at Historic Ironwood Theater on May 16th at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students.
Thank you for joining us here on In Our Range this morning.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau, and we'll see you next week on WJMS.