A prestigious event is happening later this week in Ames that not only features young, talented choir students but the talents of its conductors.
The Iowa Choral Directors Association will host the 29th Annual Opus Honor Choir.
Greene County High School Choir Director David Heupel will be one of only four guest conductors for the event. He says the student auditions are some of the toughest to qualify for with four groups of 180 students per group. Greene County sent in some auditions, but unfortunately they had no one selected for this year’s group.
He found out that he was going to be a guest conductor last November and adds that he was nervous because there are 2,200 people watching this event, but he feels confident that the students are prepared and ready for their performance. Heupel will be directing the seventh and eighth grade bass clef group. He points out that these are the best group of students assembled, so he has no worries about working through any tough parts of the music, but he looks forward to the challenge of alleviating them to a higher level of performance.
He will be joined by other guest conductors including Tanya Rosenkranz of Indian Creek Elementary and Linn Mar Schools as the fifth and sixth grade elementary honor choir, Kandy Kunzman of Harlan High School as the seventh and eighth grade treble clef honor choir and Ryan Person of Iowa City West High School as the ninth grade mixed honor choir director.
Heupel comments that his students will perform five songs which includes “Let All Men Sing” by Keith Christopher, “Die Minnesänger” by Robert Schumann, “Weep No More” by David N. Childs, “Libertatum” by Jim Papoulis and “Mosquitoes” by Paul Bliss.
Heupel was previously the overall Opus chairperson from 2008-2010 which secures the guest conductors, gets the official accepted list of participants out in the spring and handles all business of the Opus event throughout the year. Before that, he was the chair of the ninth grade mixed choir and before that, he was the facilities chair.
All performances will be at Stephens Auditorium at 4pm on Thursday. It is a sold out event.