Sunrise Singers shine on Washington

    A group of Lincoln Elementary students loves to sing so much they?ll even wake up early to do it. Lincoln music teacher Julie Hill directs a group of about 60 young songbirds called the ?Sunrise Singers.? The Sunrise Singers go to school every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:20 a.m. to rehearse a list of songs, some of which are Christmas songs. The singers practice from September to November, and then in December they put on concerts all around town.

    The Sunrise Singers are composed of fifth and sixth graders who audition for their parts. They began their ?concert tour? on Dec. 7 when they performed at the high school. They have since sung at the hospital, the McCreedy Home, the Washington Care Center and also for the Y?s Men at the Community Y.

    The Sunrise Singers perform music arranged for choirs, and are not limited to typical children?s Christmas songs.

    ?We don?t just do songs like ?Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,?? said Hill. ?We try to sing a little bit of everything, not just Christmas songs. We did a piece in Latin called ?Laudamus Canon.??

    Hill said learning a song in a foreign language (in this case a dead language) is not as difficult as one might imagine.

    ?People learn stuff so much more easily when it?s to music,? she said. ?When they set the phrase to the music, they can remember the phrase, just like when we learn our ABCs. We don?t learn them by saying them. We learn them by singing them.?

    Another mitigating factor is that there is a great deal of repetition in elementary-level music, so the kids don?t have to learn very many archaic expressions.