Director of Choirs Katherine Kouns prepares stage plans for the fall concert. The concert is scheduled for October 8.

The Carmel Choir department took on a new teacher for the new school year, Anna DeBard, who is taking over for Samuel Chenowith for the 2019-2020 school year and beyond. Coming from Clinton High School, her duties will be the same as Chenowith’s were. She will be assisting with the freshman choirs, leading Rhapsody, the Applied Music Classes, and New Edition, assisting with Accents, and directing the fall musical, according to Director of Choirs Katherine Kouns.

“I think that she’s really kind,” said Kayla Phillips, Select Sound Member and junior. “I don’t work with her much in my choir classes but every time I see her my friends say that she’s super awesome so I’m really excited to get to know her more.”

In addition to the new teacher, the choirs also have more members than ever before, with 540 members of the various choirs.

“It’s a good problem to have, but it’s going to take some time to adjust. There are going to be some challenges as far as getting costumes for everyone and tickets selling out for the concerts in three days and people upset that they can’t get tickets to see their kids. But overall it’s a really positive change.” Kouns said.

To combat this, the choir teachers are considering holding two shorter concerts on Oct. 8

“We’re thinking of doing two shorter concerts instead so that we can have some groups in one concert and some groups in the other so that way we can kind of rotate out the audience.” Kouns said.