Jonathan Perez is a senior and a member of this years county chorus. This is also Perez’s first and last time in county chorus.

During the first day of county band on March 1, there was an unexpected tornado warning that cut that day short due to multiple schools calling an early dismissal.

“We lost a full day due to the tornado warning and we were pretty pressed for time for the two other days. I’m not going to say that I didn’t like being pressed for time but we had to learn all the songs in one day but gave motivation to everyone.”

Perez has been in multiple chorus concerts all throughout his high school career so he knew what the system was like. However, this was something completely different from any of them due to it being his first county concert in a relatively new school.

When asked about how much he rehearsed this music, Perez replied “I practiced this music in class with our band director so had a good understanding of it, but I still felt that I needed to practice it a little bit at home.”

The music this year had its difficulty turned up a couple of notches due to it being the 50th anniversary of the concert and that he was the only bass singer from Jefferson-Morgan.  The concert featured many, vastly different songs such as Lo Yisa Goy which was sung in Hebrew, the vastly popular In Flanders Fields and the traditional American Folk song, Cindy.  The last song was the classic gospel song, He Never Failed Me Yet.

One of the best parts of county chorus according to Perez were the guest conductors, Mr. Bruno and his mentor, Mrs. Montgomery. Perez stated “It was a pleasure to work with both conductors, they were extremely nice people that I learned a lot from.” Perez also said “it was great to get out of school to work on something that I love doing with my friends.”

Perez personally enjoys chorus more so than other activities, however this does not mean that chorus is easy, especially when there’s a day less to practice.

Perez thought that county band was a once in a lifetime experience and would recommend that all newcomers would give it a try.