"Together" Theme Elementary Choral Program

For this year's elementary choir winter concert, I've chosen songs with the theme of togetherness. This is a great theme because there are so many possibilities, and it can work well any time of year, plus it is such a great message! I'm really excited about the songs I've picked 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. 

This year my choir rehearsals are at the end of the day (which hasn't happened in over a decade and I know is going to make rehearsals more challenging), and my 5th and 6th grades are smaller groups, so I'm trying to keep the songs a little less challenging than what I normally take on while still making sure I'm choosing pieces that will help students learn the specific choral skills I'm targeting. Here are the songs I've selected for our winter concert:

Peace Between I found this piece when I was looking for a choral octavo with partner singing and fell in love! It has 3 different verses that get layered together, each in a different language (Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin), with classic texts about peace and unity. I was only able to find an arrangement for mixed chorus but I think it will sound just as good if I have my students sing the one bass clef part up an octave. It has an accompaniment part but I'm actually thinking of doing it a cappella. 

Where We Come From As soon as I found the first song I knew I wanted to do this one to connect to the theme of togetherness. I'm adding an upper parallel harmony for the chorus, and then doing the first half of each verse as solos (probably having students take turns singing 1-2 lines each). The second half of each verse is repeated (where he sings "I done seen things") so we'll do that part in unison each time.

Whatever Walk Off the Earth is one of my go-to artists for pop songs I can arrange for my elementary chorus, and I've had this one saved for a while now. I usually have students sing at least some of the verses as solos when I do pop songs but since I'll have quite a few solos in the other song and the lyrics are easy enough to memorize in this one, I'm planning to do all of the verses in unison. I'll add an upper parallel harmony for the chorus (except for the "when you're with me.." and "bum ba dum" lines that jump around a lot, which we'll sing in unison), and have them do the last part as a partner song with one part singing "bum ba dum" while the other part sings the main lyrics.

Those are the 3 songs I'm planning to do but there were a few others that I strongly considered that I still think would be great options to go with this theme! I was originally thinking about doing a Michael Jackson song because the students have been so interested in his music since the recent movie came out, and We Are the World would go perfectly with this theme. Another Walk Off the Earth song that works well with this theme is I'll Be There- I've done this with my choir before and the students loved it. And it's a bit of a stretch but I really did think about using one of my favorite elementary choir songs, I Bought Me a Cat, with this program as well. Because it adds animals throughout the song it could work with the theme of togetherness, and it's just such a fun song to do! I honestly decided with the other songs we were doing, this one would be too much to learn in time for the winter concert.

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 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 theme ideas:

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.