Jack Senzig is teaching at Montello Wisconsin schools this year. His students just had their big Spring Concert like the ones Gifford Children’s Choir has done. Children’s Choir of teh Internet has continued there. One student got to sing a song by Cloud Cult with the live rock band. More videos of the concert will be posted here soon including covers of songs from Arcane: League of Legends. For now watch and enjoy this 6th grader singing “One Way Out of a Hole” with the band “Above the Fold” featuring our longtime guitarist Jeremy Peters.
Director Jack Senzig has taken a position at a new school for 2021-22. Children’s Choir of teh Internet will be going with him to a new school but on the same old Internet. The name of this blog may change. Mr. Senzig will be working with children from 4K through 8th grade and is seeking awesome repertoire for his new choirs.
Here is one real possibility. Check out these young musicians from the interwebs (Maybe Ireland, Maybe France I’m not sure).
Please donate to the Our Musical Life and Gifford school fundraiser to provide technology so that children in Jamaica can attend school virtually. https://www.facebook.com/OurMusicalLife
In thanks for Jamaican Reggae artist Papa Michigan helping children in Racine, WI learn, Racine is trying to help children in Jamaica Learn. We are trying to provide 50 Samsung tablets to children who have not been able to attend school due to a lack of technology. Each tablet costs about $30 US. In particular, the students at Bethlehem All Ages and Infants School in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica will be helped.
Hear a live Interview with teacher Jack Senzig on the Caribbean Rhythms Radio Network on April 26 at 11:15AM CDT https://www.crrnetworkinc.com/
Recognizing people for their contributions to an educational community often falls short. So many wonderful people that have dedicated their lives to public education retire and fade into anonymity. I have made an effort to recognize people whom I respect and that have contributed to the greater good. I regret that educational organizations rarely handle this topic well on their own.
Yesterday a man whom I respect as one of the few really good administrators I have worked for retired from the Racine Unified School District Board of Education. Mike Frontier was a principal at the the first school I worked at in Racine. He taught me that you don’t have to make decisions unilaterally. He literally expanded my vocabulary with words like consensus, paradigm and cooperative learning. I missed Mike’s retirement from Racine Unified School District as an administrator. I missed his subsequent retirement form San Juan Diego Middle school that he founded. I didn’t want to miss him leaving the School Board.
As I began considering how I could honor him I realized that although our paths have crossed several times in the past 25 years, I really didn’t know all of the wonderful things he had done. He humbly agreed to give me the contact info for people who had been important in his life. I talked to them and asked they submit videos thanking him for his work and prepared to have our choir sing a song.
The song is Lovely, by the Youtuber Loralee. Loralee is one of the most talented songwriters I have found and deserves a lot more views than she gets. The song talks about a life with missteps but the person wants to let it all go. Children’s Choir of teh Internet had 9 children contribute to the performance. These children deserve to be recognized. I have permission to share their names as follows: Ariella Cruz, Baby Darth, Lily, Ethan Wolf, Jada Medina, Adrianna T, Sophia Kress, Lilly Heatley and Princesz7714.
Both the school board president and the honoree contacted me to thank us for the presentation.
Here is the video. The choir starts at 4:10 Followed by the original song.
Reggae artist Papa Michigan joined members of the Gifford Community by sharing his creative ideas with Gifford’s students. The children in 3rd-5th grade, many of them members of our choirs, created fun versions of Papa Michigan’s Jamaica Dance video. Michigan shared this video with the kids:
Here are a few of the students’ work:
Here is an article that was in the Gleaner, a Jamaica Newspaper about this sharing.
I found this young artist on YouTube named Loralee and sure hope we can get her to collaborate with the choir this year. I think she is destined for great things and I would love to have the choir help get people to be aware of her. I’d love to have the kids sing The Rabbit Hole or Fly Away. If we could bring her to WI for a concert all the better! Help by watching and sharing her videos. She is from Michigan but may be living in Seattle.
On May 21, 2019 Children’s Choir of teh Internet covered Want You Gone from Portal 2. The little girl who played the role of GLaDOS in the choir’s 2010 cover of Still Alive came back a ll grown up as a high school senior to play the role again. Soloist May Kohler will be going to college to study the effects of neurotoxin on human test subjects. Seriously she is pursuing studies in both voice performance and a medical degree.
The children of the choir are from 8-11 years old and they are not happy that some of them have lived their entire lives without there being a new Portal game so they chose to use this opportunity to politely ask, OK well shout really, that they would like to have a Portal 3.
The choir used YouTube’s new premiere feature to release the video. Here it is!
Gifford Children’s Choir covered Cara Mia Addio written by Mike Morasky and Ellen McLain (voice of GLaDOS and the Turrets) for Valve Corp’s Portal 2. The choir will be posting their cover of Jonathan Coulton’s song from Portal 2’s credits “Want You Gone” in the next couple of days. The kids enlisted GLaDOS to speak the words of their hearts to Valve CEO Gabe Newell at the end of the video. Be sure to listen through the end!
This is a Bio for May Kohler who will be our soloist on “Want You Gone” at the May 21, 2019 concert with notes about the Cake Dress from her first appearance with the choir in 2009. The dress will be making an appearance in the video as well.
“May was one of the brightest children I have ever had the privilege to teach. She was extremely talented and above all else she made everyone who worked with her feel the warmth of her kind soul and beautiful personality.
Angela Janota was our director of Visual Presentation for our videos in the early days of this endeavor. She told me she had some whack-a-doo idea to make an L-wire dress for our soloist to sing in. I didn’t know what she was talking about but knew if Angela thought it up it was going to be awesome. The dress responded to the level of sound near it and had a graphic equalizer on the chest plate that looked like candles on a layered cake. The louder people sang the more it lit up. When the audience clapped, the dress was very happy. ” -Jack Senzig, director
Here’s a pic of May’s cameo in the cake dress in our A Christmas Trololo video:
Here is May’s Bio. She makes Gifford proud!
May Kohler was a student at Gifford Elementary school and has studied under Mr. Senzig for most of her years in choir there. In high school, May is a former Case High School attendee, participating in Master Singers and Concert Choir under Mrs Steege. However, she moved to Illinois her senior year and now attends Hononegah High School, continuing to sing in their Concert Choir. May has participated in honors choirs junior and senior year (Milwaukee Vocal Arts Festival and the District ILMEA concert respectively), and has also received the exemplary award for a soprano-tenor duet at WSMA state. She intends to attend University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall as a double major in Music Performance and Biology.
Watch for videos of “Want You Gone” and “O Cara Mia Addio, the Turret Opera” on the joinchoir Youtube channel.
The Gifford Children's Choir 