"Colors" Theme Elementary Choral Program

For our elementary choir winter concert this year, I've chosen songs with the theme of colors. This is a great theme because there are so many possibilities, and it can work well any time of year! The songs I've ended up choosing have been a big hit with my students and they have been great for teaching a range of skills and incorporating a variety of genres and styles, plus I thought I would also share the other songs I considered that could also work well with this theme depending on the performance and students you're working with. 

The idea for this theme started when Kpop Demon Hunters blew up this summer. I knew I wanted to do "Golden" with my choir, and the program grew from there. Here are the songs I've selected for our winter concert:

Golden I'm having students sing the first verse as a solo, then part 2 sings a lower harmony on the pre-chorus and chorus. I'm also having part 1 drop down an octave on the "born to be" part that goes up to a high A, and that has worked out well!

Blackbird We're doing the song in F to make it more comfortable for them to sing it an octave higher, and I've added a lower harmony for part 2 to sing on "blackbird fly" in the chorus.

All the Beautiful Colors This song was actually the other reason I wanted to do this theme- I have been wanting to do this partner song with "De Colores" for a couple of years now because I have so many Spanish speakers and I don't have my 3rd and 4th grade chorus program anymore, so the 5th graders coming into my choir don't have the same choral skills I'm used to seeing. 

Possible bonus: Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows This is so random but I really want to include it because it fits so perfectly! I have made my students obsessed with Andrew Huang, and this song, so my vision right now is to possibly throw it in as a surprise encore if we learn the other 3 songs in enough time to add it in.

Besides those, another song I really strongly considered is Blue Skies. Besides having a few clear references to colors, it would be great to throw in a jazz piece that accessible enough for a beginning choir. There's even some scat singing!

This is another theme that instrumental ensembles performing in the same concert could easily tie in with- beginning bands often have easy songs called "blues", plus there's "Greensleeves", or anything about white snow for a winter concert. So many possibilities!

I used to say I'm not a concert theme person but after doing 4 themed concerts in the last few years I don't think I can say that anymore! I still think that the priority for me is finding good songs the students will love that incorporate the choral and vocal skills I want to teach them with a variety of genres, styles, tonalities, and languages is the highest priority for selecting elementary choir concert pieces, but when a theme naturally emerges in the process that is a cool bonus! You can see all of the themed elementary choral programs I've put together in this post if you're looking for more great songs:

And if you want to see all of my posts related to teaching elementary choir, from rehearsal techniques to my favorite songs, arranging pieces for elementary choir to my favorite warmups, you can see them all here.