Music

Matthew has a love of all kinds of music . . . he plays the guitar, sings, writes music, and last year he joined the Choir in West Fork Middle School. He practiced a LOT after school in the 1st nine weeks, and tried out for All Regions Choir We were all thrilled that he made the All Region Choir, and the opportunity it offorded him. He was able to go to a choir all-day practice with a prestigious teacher from another area of Arkansas, and had the performances at the end of the day. He has a beautiful barritone/bass voice, and all these kids auditioned individually, so they were the cream of the crop from Northwest Arkansas. At the end of the day, they performed 2-4 songs that they learned that day, and the choirs were phenominal. . . and we were mightly proud of him. It is a priviledge and an honor to get there.

This year he is as involved with Choir again, and now is in High School, where he is pumped up to be able to learn from the other guys in the choir. Mr. Gay, his Choir Teacher, is awesome with these high schoolers. The ones who began under him in Middle School have an edge on the first-timers in the choir this year, because they have already learned about music . . . the flats and sharps and tones . . . I've never ever heard the doh-rae-me-sa-te-la-tee-doh ( I know that isn't right, but you get the picture, sung so fast and in so many variations!! They have a period of Choir during the day, and then there are times there are voluntary practices after school.

At our last parent-teacher conference last week Mr. Gay said he thinks Matt is a very good singer, and has the potential of getting choir scholarships in college. He is going to call Dr. Jones, a well-respected professor in the music department at the University of Arkansas, to see if there are any graduate students giving voice lessons that would be involved with mentoring Matt. Matt is SOOO excited about this prospect. We're keeping our fingers crossed and waiting for a reply.

As a kind of neat note, the choir has a fund-raiser for students to earn credit towards their Tux/Dress (tux's are $100+ through where they get them), which is the responsibility of a parking lot at U of A Razerback football games. You have to be there hours ahead of game time, because Razerback fans are huge on getting there early, setting up smokers and grills, etc. and tailgating. Matt has made it to two of these . . . and the awesome side of this is they then get a ticket to go into the game!

He's been workin' hard! Go Matt!