On January 12th and 13th four senior choir students, Hannah Spiten, Patricia Ambros, David Moon, and Caleb Forst, set out for Decorah, Iowa, to attend the Dorian Choir Festival at Luther College. Kelsey Charron was also selected to attend but had to miss due to a knee injury.

Being chosen to attend the Dorian Choir Festival is one of the highest honors among the choir participants. The festival, held at Luther College each is year, is welll known as one of the largest and best run mass chorals in the nation, with over 1,200 students attending.

The annual festival takes place on a Sunday and Monday in January. Sunday the students arrive, practice for a few hours, and then they are assigned to their dorms, and hang out with their new friends, or they attend the Sunday night dance for the participants of the festival. After waking up Monday morning, they have breakfast, and then most of the day is practicing for the concert that night.

Students from Cotter have been attending the Dorian Choir Festival ever since current choir teacher, Ms. Snyder, has been a teacher at Cotter.

“This is my 27th, year as the choir director at Cotter,” Snyder states, “We have definitely been going every year that I’ve been teaching, and the choir director before me might have even taken some students for a few years before me. So Cotter has been a part of the Dorian Choir Festival for a good 30 years.”
Snyder even remembers attending the Dorian Choir Festival when she was a high school student in Plainview.

Patricia Ambros had this to say about the experience, “I expected it to be a lot of talented singers, but it was much larger than I anticipated. There were over 1,200 students…it was incredibly loud. The director was very good. Even though he was working with such a large group we connected well with us. The event is very organized. Hannah and I stayed in a dorm room with two other girls from different high schools and two girls from Luther. The college girls were very welcoming and we had a nice time. The dance was fun, I met some people I had met at Winona State honor choir earlier in the year. The practices were long but the performance was great. It was a very nice experience.”

David Moon, one of the other Cotter students attending the Festival, had this to say about the experience. “I was surprised and impressed by the amount of people. Thanks Luther for inviting all the students to nurture their musical talents in such a cordial environment. The Dorian experience provided a different paradigm for my own musical experience, as we were able to observe the different choirs and it gave us an opportunity to think further of how music influences our life. I would strongly suggest future choir members to consider attending the Dorian festival.”