The Lincoln Gospel Concert choir is made up of auditioned juniors and seniors from Lincoln High School.

 

Each year the choir performs a traditional December concert consisting of classic choral literature including composers such as Mozart, Handel, Rachmaninoff, Hassler, Barnum, Whitacre, Clausen, Mortensen and others.  The choir always performs two shows per concert selling out many of their shows.

 

Since 2001, the choir has produced a spring show that focuses on diversity in our world. The choir has studied Jewish, African American, and Native American music.  The spring shows are brought to New York City every other year.  These shows have been performed at St. John The Divine and  Jazz At Lincoln Center in the famous Allen Room overlooking Central Park.

 

Our Mission:

 

We believe that diversity is exclaiming itself among society, but especially among our choir. We strive to celebrate and make notice the cultural and artistic aspects within the music that we sing. We believe that in order to truly experience and bring to life the music we present, we must dive deep into the roots of each culture we represent. We must live for the moments and work with great spirit through each culture. "Diving deep and bringing forth" is the motto we, the choir, live by.

 

T.H.I.S. Movement which stands for The Hero Inside Shines is the philanthropy segment of what the choir stands for. "We refuse to let the world be as it is. We refuse to blind ourselves by excuses and lies. We are determined to have an effect on this world. We will persevere to change our world one action, one note at a time. T.H.I.S. is our movement. T.H.I.S. is us.

 

The students raise money for various organizations in their home town of 8000 people as well as overseas. They have sent thousands of dollars to Haiti to a village that needed a new water filtration system; sent school supplies, new and used clothing, plus medical supplies to a village in Africa; donated money plus purchased personal hygene supplies to a Violence Inervention Program in their home town. They started tackling the bullying problem at their hometown elementary school by purchasing a "Bully Bench". The bench is for little ones to sit on if they do not have a friend to play with at recess. Once on the bench, the goal is to have other young children see a friend in need and invite them to play. The choir hopes to purchase at least two more benches. The choir also raises money for the local food bank plus raised enough money to feed over 12,000 people through the Kids Against Hunger program. The students also visit elderly care facilities where they visit, sing, and do arts and crafts with the residents. 

 

Darcy Reese has been teaching in Thief River Falls for 26 years. She is in charge of 320 students 6th-12th every day. She has a passion for bringing quality music and experiences to each of her students. She has won numerous awards including the very prestigious Minnesota Music Educator's Teacher of the Year award in 2002. She has worked with various professional artists that she has brought into her classrooms for her students. She has exposed her singers to jazz, classical, ethnic, and specifically Black Gospel music. Her mentor for learning Black Gospel literature was the late Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer from Amherst and Robert Robinson, gospel singer, from Minneapolis. "The best part about teaching is seeing the end product. I start out with a vision of what I want the end product to look like. I then write a curriculum to support every aspect of the journey with the students and finally the day arrives where it all comes together and all participants experience and understand the true meaning of the journey. They take the journey; experience the music; and pass it on.