“May the road rise up to meet you”

The CVHS Choir Program premiered its first ever virtual choir on Thursday evening.  This effort included 138 student performances, from all levels and all grades of students in the CVHS choirs, an enormous feat in this crazy time.  

Teacher Laryssa Sadoway shared the following: 

“Each year, the CVHS Choral Program has a tradition of closing our spring concert with Katie Moran Bart’s ‘Blessing.’  It is a simple song, full of many memories and feelings, and each year we use it as our time to bid farewell to our graduating seniors.  They assemble in the middle of the risers, with swaths of underclassmen flanking them on both sides.  When we reprise the “Until We Meet Again” chorus, our seniors traditionally file off of the risers and off the stage into the audience, first greeted by juniors who offer them a rose and a tissue.  There are tears.  We see them off, and then we look to the risers, to this giant hole left by their moving on.  It tells the story, every time.  This rite of passage, this brief ceremony, it sometimes means more to people than Graduation Day itself.  These seniors have grown up on this stage, some of them singing concerts on those risers since sixth grade!  They’ve watched the classes grow up and be handed their roses.  They’ve cried bidding farewell to old friends and older siblings.  And now, it is their turn.  

“2020, we can’t offer you the risers and a jam-packed stage singing shoulder-to-shoulder for a sold-out house.  But we have our collective work from this crazy Shelter-In-Place time, where somehow we still came together to try to send you off with heartfelt congratulations and well-wishes.  Consider the roses passed, the virtual hugs extended, and the tears most definitely shed for all we have shared.  How lucky we are to have had you as role models in this choral program.  We love you so much, and are proud to call you CVHS Choir Alumni! 

“May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rains fall soft upon your fields. Until we meet again, my friends!”