Jun 2, 2007

Seniors sing their farewells

Mountain View High choir losing nearly 70 years of experience

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

Every Wednesday night for the past 13 years, Laura Hamilton has gone to choir practice.

But following today's final performance, midweek nights will be free for the senior from Mountain View High School.

"It'll be lonely, I suppose," she said.

This weekend, six other seniors will graduate with Hamilton from the Palo Alto-based Cantabile Youth Singers, a group of 115 students from around the Peninsula.

Combined, the seven graduating seniors have logged nearly 70 years in choir.

"It's the biggest number of seniors we've ever had," Elena Sharkova, the choir's artistic director, said Friday. "You can't really replace them."

Gunn High School senior Lindsay Miller moved to Palo Alto from England seven years ago and joined the choir one year later.

"I've had choir on Wednesday nights since I moved to California," Miller said. Over the years, she has noticed an increasing number of high school students staying in the choir, she said.

"Many choirs in the area stop in the 10th grade because the children become so involved in high school activities, but we don't," Sharkova said.

Miller said when she joined, only one or two older students were in the choir.

"Now, it's probably mostly high schoolers," she said.

The choir, a community group not affiliated with any school or religious group, has been drawing students from across the area for almost 14 years, said Barbara Weinstein, president of the Cantabile choral guild.

"These singers have been around almost essentially since Cantabile started," Weinstein said.

The group practices in Los Altos each week, often spending hours on one passage, Hamilton said.

"The choir meets once a week, but it is a very long rehearsal, from 5:30 to 8:45 p.m.," Sharkova said.

Elaine Wu, a senior at Homestead High School in Cupertino, said the choir she joined in first grade has remained a comforting constant.

"Around middle school, I started getting busier," Wu said. But when she evaluated which activities to chop, she never put Cantabile on the block.

"I liked choir the best, so I stayed," she said.

Beyond the music, the choir's close-knit community creates a "whole other family," Wu said.

"My mom passed away a couple years ago," Wu said. "There are so many mothers in Cantabile and they all became my moms, too."

Many of the singers are already thinking beyond today's final concert. Miller is already planning college reunions near Colgate University, which she will attend starting next fall.

"Some people are going to school near me next year," she said.

And Wu said she was looking forward to starting school at the University of California, Berkeley rather than face Palo Alto without choir.

"If I were at home, I'd probably go crazy!" she said.

The Cantabile concert will take place today at 7 p.m. at Le Petit Trianon, located at 72 North Fifth Street in San Jose.


E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.