By Rod Rowe
DUNLAP, Ind — What started out as a small recital by members of the Concord Clarinet Choir for friends and family as a fund-raiser for the Haitian earthquake effort grew to a full evening of vocal and instrumental music Thursday, involving about 15 high school and community groups.
Jon Santiago, a private music teacher serving in Concord High School, said he and his students began talking two weeks after the earthquake struck Haiti about what they might do to help with aid. They first discussed a small recital by their clarinet group, but word spread to others in the Concord music department. Brittany Gableman, choir director, said members of the Concord Singers had been brainstorming about what to do to help Haiti, too,
“We were wondering how we could help up here,” Gableman said. “When Jon had the idea, and he completed the details” the vocal department joined the program.
Santiago contacted the Red Cross and joined in the fund-raising for Haiti through that agency. Donation cans have been placed around the school in recent weeks to boost what was raised in the Thursday concert.
Gableman said singers who planned solos and duets had been practicing at lunchtime and after school to prepare for Thursday’s concert at Concord. Some vocalists were using this concert as a dress rehearsal for the Indiana State School Music Association district contest Saturday at Fairfield High School.
And when Gableman’s mother, Memorial High School Claudia Phipps, heard about the plans at Concord, she said her music departments wanted to join in.
And the adult group, the Martin Luther King Community Choir, also joined the program.
“Everything just came together,” Santiago said. He said the young musicians have been working on the program the past three weeks. The seniors in the clarinet choir even recruited three or four new members just for this performance, and Santiago said he was going to play saxaphone with Concord Jazz 1.
Santiago, a 2000 Concord graduate, was in the marching band and the jazz band when he was a student.
In thanking the crowd and introducing the program Thursday night, Santiago said, “Together we are making this a better place.”
