By LUKE SMUCKER

Recorder News Staff

The National Association for Music Education has designated March as Music in our Schools Month and tonight at 7 p.m. in the Bert De Rose auditorium at Amsterdam High School, the mixed choir, select choir and all county choir will be performing a free concert.

Amsterdam High School chorus teacher, Patricia Valiante, said that the theme for this concert, is showing the community highlights of what the chorus has already done and the things that they have planed for later this year. The group that went to the All County Festival, is going to sing a song to represent what they did there and the rest of the choruses will be performing the songs that they will be singing at the Baltimore Music competition next month. Then, the combined chorus will be performing songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, "The Phantom of the Opera."

"I like to include musical theater in our March concerts," said Valiante. "There are a lot of opportunities for kids to sing solos when we do Broadway songs."

Though the chorus students performed their "Phantom of the Opera" songs at the Taste of Amsterdam Tuesday evening, Valiante said she expects the chorus to be able to perform the songs better at Thursday's concert.

"It went well Tuesday night," said Valiante. " But there are a lot of words in those songs and expect everyone to be better on the words [today]."

Valiante said that she likes the March concert because it gives parents a chance to hear music that the students will be performing for competition and it gives the students a chance to get used to singing the songs in front of an audience, something that will have to become second nature to them when they perform in front of the judges next month.

"It's a little bit of a test," said Valiante. "It tests how they perform, their memorization skills and it indicates to me how ready they are for Baltimore. If they screw up some place, we still have time to fix it."

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Contact Luke Smucker at luke.smucker@recordernews.com