Ensembles

The Niles North High School Choral Program is home to 7 ensembles - 4 curricular, and 3 extracurricular. Each is designed to help students learn how to more effectively use their voices, as well as learn more about music theory, music history, and ear training, through the music that they practice and perform for each concert. The more that students develop their musical skills, the more likely it is that they will be able to audition into the more advanced ensembles, which practice and perform more advanced and complex literature.

The curricular ensembles are geared toward teaching enrolled students to have an appreciation for all types of music from many different eras. The focus for these ensembles is to foster healthy vocal technique, resulting in a beautiful vocal tone across any styles of music, as well as building musical skills such as sight-reading, ear training, and music theory. Equally important is the building of community and camaraderie among all the members of the NNHS choral program.

Our extracurricular Vocal Jazz Program, which has been in place since 1991, has long been a leader in Illinois choral music education. The focus of the three vocal jazz ensembles (Harmonic Motion, Sound Check, and Take One) is to build students' understanding of and appreciation for jazz, which was the first genre of music born in the United States. Jazz, of course, has changed over the years, and has fused with other types of music, which has been paralleled in the types of literature now avaialble for vocal jazz ensembles, and our vocal jazz staff strives to expose students to a variety of different types of jazz literature by myriad composers and arrangers, as well as help them understand where the roots of this music lie.