Three St. James High School students earned their spots as members in the Missouri All-State Choir, held Jan. 28-31 at Tan-Tar-A Conference Center at Lake of the Ozarks.

Senior Brody Branum performed with the 192-voice choir as a tenor. Choral Director Dustin Felan has had Branum as a student for seven years, and said he enjoyed watching him step outside his comfort zone musically in the performance.

“Watching him develop what I know that he can do has been really uplifting, and hopefully he can see what he can actually do when he trusts the process with that,” Felan said. “So he’s a hard worker, and that’s kind of what helped him with obtaining this. And of course, when he was there, he told me that was the best musical experience he’s had thus far.”

Branum performed six songs with the group during the Jan. 31 performance: “Alleluia,” “If You Love for Beauty,” which was performed in German, “Holding the Light,” “Ta Na Solbici,” “In Remembrance” and “The Circle of Life.” Before attending, he took part in two four-hour rehearsals to prepare the songs and then rehearsed with the group and All-State director at the conference.

“(The performance) went really, really well,” Felan said. “Every single All-State director that comes in — because it’s different every year — most of them have been an All-State director in other states, and they rave how good Missouri is, how well organized it is, how prepared the students are for when they come and these students’ attitudes.”

Senior Addalye Felan was selected for first-alternate soprano. She was also selected last year, and is the 30th student in the school’s history to be selected twice.

“Addalye is actually my daughter, so seeing her perform last year and being able to be selected twice is, it’s literally the proudest moment that I have thus far of teaching,” Felan said. “Having these kids work as hard as they do, and being able to accomplish this makes me, of course, a proud dad, but also a proud teacher.”

Senior Melody Huffman was selected for second-alternate tenor. Although she’s been in band since sixth grade, this is her first year in choir. 

“Her musical abilities from band really helped her with singing in choir, because she could just apply how to play her clarinet well to how you’re supposed to sing,” Felan said. “On top of that, the music reading and everything else is just a good positive.”

St. James students competed for their spot in the All-State Choir against schools of all sizes throughout the central part of Missouri, including ones that have much more robust music programs. The three students that were selected earned their spots due to their top scores on auditions for the district and state levels.

“They don’t care what class you are, how big your school is, how much resources your school has,” Felan said. “It’s just here’s the standard, meet the standard and be the best at it. And that’s what’s great about it, about music in general, is we’re not going to only compete against schools that are our size.”

St. James has had students selected for the All-State Choir every year since 2015.

In addition, Ukrainian foreign exchange student Anastasiia Doreshenko was one of 12 students in the state selected to perform with the All-State Collective Ensemble. As part of her audition, Doreshenko performed a song she composed herself in Ukrainian. The ensemble collaborated over the course of the conference to put together a concert of nine original songs.

Fifth-grader Julianne Murphy was selected to perform with the All-State Children’s Choir. Throughout the conference, she worked with clinician Greg Giplin and performed Jan. 27 with almost 200 other children from across the state.

“It’s a real privilege to be able to teach these kids and see the future come up as well,” Felan said.