Christine Lyon, a Pleasant Valley senior, is known around the district for her incredible singing voice. Her family is filled with musically-gifted people, and she is no exception.
She discovered her love of music and singing from her family at a young age. Her mom, Catherine Lyon, is a choir director at Pleasant Valley. Her father, Ron Lyon, plays six instruments. Christine’s siblings, Kaitlyn, Nathan, and Rachel Lyon all have participated or currently sing in the Pleasant Valley choirs. “Some of my favorite times with my family is when we’re singing carols all around the house,” she said.
Most recently, Lyon participated in Solo and Ensemble Festival. It is a choir, band, and orchestra competition where students from around the Quad Cities are scored by judges for their solo or small group performances. The ranges of scores are divisions V through I with I being the highest score. Along with a score, a judge can decide that an act was the best out of all the 60 other performances the judges heard that day from many different schools.
Of the six choir centers, only five chose to award best of centers. All five were awarded to Pleasant Valley. One for Jimmy Guest’s solo, the other four had one common factor: Christine Lyon. The four best of rooms were given to her ensemble with the Leading Tones (the top jazz choir at Pleasant Valley) girls, her quartet, her duet with Madison Wells, and her duet with Rachel Lyon.
“Christine is an incredibly talented individual; to be able to work with her as a choir ambassador and throughout the All-State/Solo and Ensemble process has been such a treat,” said member of her quartet, Alex Jungers. Winning four best of centers broke Pleasant Valley’s record of three, which was held by Lyon’s older sister. Lyon also had a solo where she was given a division I with a score of 33/35.
Lyon loves many genres of music, but her favorite is classical music. “I’m a bit of a language nerd, and I like how poetic the lyrics in classical music are,” she said.“Also I feel that it takes a certain level of skill to sing well in different languages at a range that isn’t typically approached in the music that is popular today.”
Lyon also hopes her love for singing and music will continue into the future. She will be attending Drake University to major in music and pre-medicine. She dreams of becoming a speech pathologist who specializes in helping singers retrain their vocal cords after injuries or as they age.
