Copper Hill Choir offers fun, creative outlet for students; concert to be held Sunday

Performing has long been an important part of life for Montana Tech students Dean Summers and Alaina Callarman.

Summers, a computer science junior from Billings, is the son of a music teacher who participated in choir throughout his school years and at church. Callarman is a biological sciences freshman from Butte who spent years performing with the Orphan Girl Theatre before landing the lead role in the musical 'The Girl with the Ivory Ankle' this past summer. Both students are members of the University’s Copper Hill Choir.

“It's a creative outlet for me,” Summers said. “As a computer science major, more often than not, I'm very much in the numbers, in the math, doing very by-the-books kind of things, and choir is  a bit more open and out there where we sit down and do something different. I like having time to do things that are not just numbers, math, by-the-books, you're supposed to be doing.”

Callarman agreed, and said attending choir class is not only a great way to earn humanities credit, it’s a fantastic way to relax from the science coursework required of her as an undergraduate with a pre-medical school focus.

“It’s fun,” she said.

There are only five students enrolled in choir this semester, and Summers is the only male.

“You have to sing your part to be heard,” Callarman said.

Summers would like to see more students join, and stressed the contemporary aspect of the group.

“If you would like a creative outlet and you like to sing, even if it's just like in your car, definitely come out and try out, because it's always going to be fun at the end of the day,” Summers said. “We try our best to keep it lighthearted, keep it interesting. We're not in choir robes, music in front of us, going for the long opera notes. We're not that formal. We're still trying to produce great choral sound, but we're not sticklers. We're not stuck up.”

The Mining City Choral Union and the Montana Tech Copper Hill Choir will present their winter 2024 concert, “Twelve Days Later: A Christmas Reckoning,” directed by Fred Crase and accompanied by Janet Shuttlesworth on Dec. 8 at 3 p.m. at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 1621 Thornton Ave. Ticket prices are $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors.

The show presents the humorous story of a holiday gone wrong through a variety of funny holiday related parodies and novelty songs all woven together with a parody of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” rewritten by Fred Crase as “The Reindeer.”

“It’s pretty silly, which makes it hard not to laugh while singing,” Callarman said.

Summers says there are some beloved holiday pop songs in the show, classics like his personal favorite, “O Magnum Mysterium,” and some parodies that are hilarious.

“One of our pieces is called the ‘12 Days After Christmas,’” Summers said. “So, it's about the cleanup of all the 12 days of Christmas presents after that all happens. So, you know, the fact that they get 50 people out of nowhere. How do you deal with that? One of our pieces is called ‘Text Me Merry Christmas,’ which is about a couple that is long distance.”

For more information please visit miningcitycu.org or contact Fred Crase at fcrase@mtech.edu.