'A Saveable Memento Of 2020'; Over 300 North Allegheny Choral Students Perform Virtual Concert

WEXFORD, Pa. (KDKA) -- Virtual classrooms just don't work for everyone, so North Allegheny's choral teachers got creative. The results -- you have to see to believe.

Choral music just doesn't lend itself well to the world of virtual teaching.

For the singers at North Allegheny Intermediate and Senior High Schools in grades 9 through 12, 300 voices strong came together.
It was a class assignment, so the students received points for submitting their videos.

Proms, traditional graduations, hallway and classroom farewells are all memories altered or lost for the year, and so is the final spring choral concert.

"I thought it would be a fun way to simulate a performance in a way that we won't be able to have for who knows how long," said David Schmiech, North Allegheny Senior High Choral Director

With this project being no easy creation. Schmeich put together a video for the students to sing along with.

"They had the track to keep them on time, they had me to breath with them as they are used to and then they had the music come up at the bottom," said Schmiech. "I was worried when we started that it would sound like they recorded them in 300 different bedrooms."

Once the student videos started pouring in, Schmeich started putting them together in groups that would fit on the screen.

"So I mixed the senior soprano and alto seniors together then junior soprano and altos together and so on," said Schmiech.

David estimates that he put around 100 hours into the mixing and what emerged from the sounds of those individual bedrooms was the blend of the combined choirs on stage

It was a saveable memento of 2020.

"Maybe they'll have a memory to look back on in a different way than a concert," said Schmiech.