35 Decorah students have been selected to participate in the 32nd annual Opus Honor Choir Festival--the most students the Decorah community has ever had involved.
This is the twelfth year that Decorah has arranged for students to audition for the Opus Honor Choirs. During the past twelve years more than 275 students from Decorah have been accepted through recordings submitted by Dean Beckman, Jason Rausch, and community youth choir directors. This year, 25 students were selected from Decorah Middle School by recordings submitted by Dean Beckman. This number is the highest amount of students accepted into the honor choirs by one teacher in the state of Iowa in 2017. Ten students were selected by recordings submitted by Jason Rausch at Decorah High School. The following students were accepted:
5th Grade: Elizabeth Bjork and Gwenyth Thompson
6th Grade: Lydia Frank, Bethany Hanson, Elayna Hook, Sydney Kipp, Naomi Simon, and Brynn Storhoff
7th Grade: Casey Brickley, Ella Grouws, Sally Laybourn, Ada Lovelace,
Morgan Moen, Michael Njus, Rebekah Pedlar, Daniel Skrade, Hope Stahl, and Gareth Sweet
8th Grade: Brielle Buresh, Drew Chamberlain, Weston Everson, Caleb Huebner, Cole Huebner, Kendall McCain, and Thomas Ostlie
9th Grade: Gabriel Anderson, Sofie Grouws, Maria Hendrickson, Leila Johnson, Nolan Jostand, Noah Lovelace, Cooper McElree, A. J. Morrow,
Luke Walter, and Peter Wilson
The 2017 Opus Honor Choirs will perform at 4:00 p.m. Thursday in C.Y. Stephens Auditorium in the Iowa State Center at Iowa State University in Ames.