The Montgomery County High School band and choir groups held their spring concert on April 22 at the school’s Gymnasium.

It turned out to be the last performance of seven MCHS seniors. Sonder Cole, Alex Hutsell, Gray Rosemann and Dakota Williams make up the senior class of the MCHS Blue Royal Band. Cole, Rachel Harris and Hannah Kemp are the choir’s only seniors.
Band director Lauren Seifried said she was thrilled to work with her four seniors this year.

“I just can’t tell you how talented these seniors are and how amazing it is to get a chance to teach them and be a part of their world,” Seifried said.

Williams is one of the percussionists. He joined the R-II band when he was in sixth grade. He plans to attend Truman State University.
“I absolutely loved having Dakota,” Seifried said. “It’s been awesome. He’s the snare drummer who would and could and has always been kind of the central heart of our band, so we’re incredibly grateful for his central heartbeat that kept us on time for so many years and we have to figure out what to do without him.”

Hutsell plays the trumpet. He transferred to the R-II School District from the Fort Zumwalt School District in seventh grade. He will be attending State Technical College next year.

“Alex has always been a bright spot in our section,” Seifried said. “He wasn’t here last year, but he came back for his senior year, which meant the world to me, especially when I was in a crisis and didn’t have a trumpet player. So Alex came back and he saved the day with his trumpet skills and ended up doing two or three solos in the show and coming out and killing the game.”

Seifried said Cole, who plans to attend Truman State next year, was valuable as one of the guard members.

“He was kind of my first test trial of guard and we did the best we could,” Seifried said. “We made a lot of mistakes, but Sonder was always there being like, ‘You know what, that’s OK, that’s OK. We just move on.’ I really appreciated that because we’re all kind of learning from that perspective.”

Seifried said she enjoyed working with Rosemann, who plans to attend the Academy of Makeup and Arts next year.

“Gray came to us and taught me how to spin flags and I’ll be forever grateful,” she said. “It was me and the YouTube tutorial. But you know what, sometimes that’s not good enough and you need a physical person to come and say, ‘Hey, have you thought about this or have you tried this?’ She was just a positive bright spot to have.”

Cole participated in both concert and honors choir, Kemp was a member of the concert choir and Harris was in the honors choir. Both Harris and Cole will be participating in state competition in May.

Harris, who plans to attend Central Methodist University next year, has been a member of the choir all four years. She was given a medal by music director Kylee Watters-Stephens for her contributions.