Mtn. View’s choir in need has friends indeed

Well, that didn’t take long, thanks to community members who heard and answered the plea — the Mountain View High School Choir will be getting replacements for its aging, 33-year-old choir robes , the director said Friday.

Less than 48 hours after NewsChannel 21 reported on the need, Choir Director Susan Evans said Friday they have met their sponsorship goal.

“Some extremely generous members of our community have come forward to support our choir program,” she wrote. As a result, “We are going to begin measuring students for their robes and place our order this coming week!”

The Oct. 18 Fall Choir Concert still include a silent auction and special drawing, Evans said.

“We will still be accepting donations to cover other choir and performing arts-related costs, such as repairing and replacing sound equipment, purchasing new music, new spotlights for the theater, and instruments for our fabulous band and orchestra department,” she added.

“I am overwhelmed by the tremendous generosity of our community,” Evans said. “These students are so very fortunate to be living in beautiful Central Oregon, particularly Bend. It is an honor to teach here.”

Mountain View High School’s choir has a shelf full of trophies and boasts of placing in the top 12 of choir teams across the state.

But students are wearing the same robes worn by every Mountain View choir member since 1979.

Besides being a couple of decades behind in fashion, the robes have moth holes, fading and tears.

Evans said Wednesday she hoped that by the winter concert, her students will look as good as they sound.

“We just have to make a big push for this one important change in our program,” Evans said. “To dress our students so they look as beautiful as they sound.”

Choir student Monet Iams said it’s hard seeing other teams at the school always getting new uniforms.

“For us ,choir is kind of like a sport,” Iams explained. “I mean, when you are playing a sport, when you see another team in a really good uniform, it makes you think, ‘Wow, they’re good.’ And we’d like to be well-presented, and for people to look at us and be like, ‘Wow, they’re going to be really good.'”

The choir is holding a fund-raiser on Oct. 18 at 6:45 p.m. before its first performance at the school.

Activities will include a silent auction, ticket sales for a prize drawing — and the new robe style will be revealed.

If you would like to help out with the robe costs, donation forms are available at Mountain View’s front office.