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Who We Are
Who We Are
Midnight Voices is an award-winning vocal jazz ensemble at Rochelle Twp. High School. Midnight Voices is the highest level ensemble in the RTHS Choral Dept., and membership is by audition only. Midnight Voices has appeared at the New York Voices Vocal Jazz Festival, the Gold Company Vocal Jazz Festival, the Millikin University Vocal Jazz Festival, and has travelled all the way to New Orleans in its nearly 30-year history. Midnight Voices is committed to exploring modern trends in vocal jazz and developing high school singers into confident performers.
What is Vocal Jazz?
What is Vocal Jazz?
"A great jazz choir will become a destination ensemble within a music program. Students like it because they get to sing popular songs in a small group on individual microphones. More importantly, they have to get comfortable with close and complex harmony, syncopation, and improvisation. Learning to sing these characteristic elements of jazz style is a guaranteed musicianship boost. Having vocal jazz as part of a choral program means producing more complete singing musicians who have great ears and can sight-read"
-David von Kampen, "Why Vocal Jazz Matters, and How To Not Stop Doing It"
Vocal jazz is, as the name implies, singing in a jazz style. Jazz is America's original art form and is incredibly important to its musical history and heritage.
Jazz Singing has existed from the very beginning of jazz itself, beginning with the likes of blues legends Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy. Jazz singers such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra further developed singing within jazz music and made the art form popular and well-established.
From this legacy of jazz singing, there eventually came the emergence of jazz singing ensembles, such as The Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, The Real Group, and the Swingle Singers. Our vocal jazz program at RTHS takes heavy inspiration from the likes of the New York Voices (pictured to the right), The Manhattan Transfer, and Western Michigan University's vocal jazz ensemble, Gold Company (pictured above).
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