In late January, the Pleasant Valley High School Chamber Choir traveled three hours to the Wartburg College campus in Waverly, Iowa, on invitation from the 2025 Wartburg Meistersinger Honor Choir. Chamber Choir performed a four-song set, featuring “The Gift to Sing”, composed by the Honor Choir’s 2025 guest conductor, Dr. Marques L. A. Garrett.
In addition to Choir Conductor Meg Byrne’s carefully curated and memorized set, Chamber learned three additional pieces by Dr. Garrett in under 12 hours, to perform them the same night. This special experience is one of many which bring high school and college students together across Iowa throughout each year.
Future music educator Carly Berta attended Meistersinger this year and had a fantastic experience. “I really enjoyed singing at Wartburg because all the staff we got to work with were so encouraging and helpful, I had previously attended three singing camps there, and it was great to go back one last time for something new,” expressed Berta.
Berta ended her last visit to Wartburg representing PV with a soprano solo in Sarah Quartel’s “Sing My Child.” “I love singing but struggle a lot with nerves, and this concert really helped with that. I had some solo lines in one of our songs, and I was pretty nervous about them, but I ended up performing them just fine and the concert left me with a new sense of confidence. If I could sing by myself in front of 500 choir kids my age, I honestly feel like I can sing in front of anyone now,” Berta said.
Beyond visiting camps and clinics at colleges throughout Iowa, these young musicians are learning the most from their very own teachers. PV associate choir director and Luther College alum Bailey Connors shared his journey through Collegiate singing, “The environment was competitive but friendly. The people I went to school with were skilled at their craft and yet were humble and wanting to learn. I learned just as much from my colleagues as I did from my professors. It was a great environment to be in.”
Connors also emphasised the importance of dedication to the arts, especially in teachers, which is how Luther’s program has flourished, “All through the 20th century Luther College was famous nationally for their incredible music programs, due largely to the director of the Nordic Choir and Head of Choral Activities, Weston Noble.” Noble’s legacy in music education is felt throughout Iowa and the country, “Many of the teachers working in Iowa now were his students,” Connors continued.
This influence is felt in current music education efforts in Iowa, leaving it with over 200,000 students enrolled in the Iowa High School Music Association (IHSMA), which manages and regulates various regional events and statewide music festivals.
Aside from the IHSMA, the Iowa Choral Directors Association (ICDA) also has a large presence in choral programs throughout the state, with over 900+ annual renewed choir director memberships. The ICDA relies on an endowment to meet increasing demands for classroom teachers, which occur as a result of the economic times that threaten to cut staff, facilities and programs. This endowment is an effort by the ICDA to self-fund, when tax benefits and state distributions of funding are not given.
As financial pressures mount, music educators are concerned with the future of affordable and successful programs, and seek appreciation for the arts through better funding. “Either what we are being asked to do has to change or we need to be funded more. That’s [lack of appreciation & funding for the arts] a systemic and societal issue stemming from an educational culture that values state testing over all other factors of study because a good portion of our funding is directly tied to our students’ state test scores,” Connors explained.
“That [lack of funding] trickles down to the choral programs where there is no state testing and just seems like the ‘fun class’ where we ‘just sing’. This has historically led to choral programs being underfunded and undervalued.” Connors added. Connors believes the undervalued aspect of the arts is lack of participation in them, similarly to how non-athletes feel about sports.
The results of this phenomenon are why it is a strong goal of choir programs to encourage participation through the next generation of educators, like the heavy support of the arts at Pleasant Valley, “PV is a district that values more than just state test results and its actions in funding its various fine arts and other elective programs show that. I feel very blessed to be working here,” Connors concluded.
There is hope for musicians at PV, learning through their many electives and various performance experiences across the state. Berta reveals an experience from the 2023-2024 school year, “There have been so many cool opportunities provided to us through chamber choir. Last year the 28 singers auditioning for All-State got to sing at the John Deere headquarters, which was also very memorable.”
She elaborates on her decision to pursue music education, “It’s experiences like these that have influenced me to pursue music in college. I’ve gotten to see the joy music has brought to so many people, myself included, and I would love nothing more than to keep that cycle going.”
