(Estherville)– The 2025 Jazz Choir and Show Choir Festival is coming up January 28th-30th at the Janice K. Lund Performing Arts Center at the Estherville Campus of Iowa Lakes Community College. Brett Fuelberth, Vocal Music Professor, says a number of schools from throughout the region will be participating…
“It’s the beginning of the show choir and jazz choir season, so we provide this clinic especially for a lot of local schools to come and this is often their first performance, first time out of their school performing, and so it’s a great opportunity for them to get on stage. The public’s invited, it’s free to come to, and we pretty much are going all day all three days. It definitely has grown. This is I think the biggest one we’ve had, we should have 33 choirs here on those three days. They get to perform their show on stage and then we have some really great clinicians who go up on stage with them and try to improve their show as they’re all preparing for state contests for competition season.”
Fuelberth says the event is not a competition, adding it’s a great educational opportunity for students who are reviewed by the clinicians…
“I think probably for at least 26 years we’ve had Clay Blackman who’s from Omaha. He comes up and does a great job with the show choirs. And then we have Curt Runestad. Dr. Runestad is from Doan College. He comes up as well as Duane Ides who is local here and does a great job doing the jazz choirs. We have so many jazz choirs this year. It’s amazing.”
Fuelberth adds the public is urged to attend…
“It’s free and I mean it pretty much goes from 8:00 am to depending on some of the days ending at 3:00 or anywhere from like 3:00 or until 5:00 in the afternoon. People can just come any time of day and look for the schedule because a lot of the local groups, Spirit Lake, Okoboji, Spencer, Harris-Lake Park, Emmetsburg, Estherville, you know a lot of our local groups, Ruthven-Graettinger-Terril, are all performing.”
