Songs illuminating all the colors of the rainbow provide the theme for the Flathead High School winter choir concert Tuesday.

“Following this theme prompted us to gather a great variety of choral arrangements and musical styles, and has resulted in a delightfully entertaining program,” said choral director Kevin Allen-Schmid.

The Dorian Choir kicks off the concert with “Wendayaho,” also known as “Cherokee Morning Song,” arranged by local musician Craig Naylor.

“The ‘Morning Song’ starts in the dark and gently unfolds as the lights come on, simulating the dawn bringing light and color into the world,” Allen-Schmid said.

The mostly freshman Dorian choir then follows with a German classic, “Heiden Roeslein (Little Heather Rose)” by Franz Schubert and the ballad “Silver The River.”

The Choral-Aires, Flathead’s select vocal ensemble, present the whole spectrum of color with songs entitled “The Silver Swan,” “Orange Colored Sky,” “Gold,” “Blues Down To My Shoes” and “Over The Rainbow.” 

The women of the Concert Choir will sing “The Colors of the Wind,” from “Pocahontas.”

“How could we leave that one out?” Allen-Schmid asked.

The Concert Choir’s major song for the evening is “A Boy and a Girl,” by Eric Whitacre, a setting of an evocative poem by Octavio Paz about the stages of love, including lines about “savoring oranges and limes.”

A film made by former Flathead High choir member Katy Allen-Schmid, set to the choir’s 2007 recording of “A Boy and a Girl,” will be shown before this year’s choir sings it. The film features former choir members Kacie West and Chauncey Allison when they were seniors in 2007, and current choir member Jessica Heler, who was a fourth-grader at that time.

“It’s a beautiful and heart-touching three-minute film,” Allen-Schmid said, “and it’s fun to see how these singers have grown up, just as the characters in the poem do in the song.”

The Varsity Choir will sing “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and “Bonnie Wood Green,” followed by a semi-staged medley of songs from the musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” including the song “Somewhere That’s Green.”

“This concert is really the Varsity Choir’s coming out party,” Allen-Schmid said. “They are mostly sophomores and juniors, and they are the future of the FHS choir program. Their skills are so solid that the future is clearly in good hands.”

The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium and will last for about an hour. There is no charge to attend the show.