Moore High School Choir Highlights Oklahoma Connections, Sings at Carnegie Hall
A recent student trip highlights the far-reaching effect of music and the arts on the lives of young Oklahomans. In April, Moore High School Choir Director Lynn Herbel led a group of 40 audition choir high school students to New York to sing at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Jake Runestad, an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated composer and conductor.
Organized through National Concerts, a company dedicated to coordinating performance opportunities and artistic guidance, the trip included intensive rehearsals before a Saturday night concert. Herbel also chose to participate, singing in Carnegie Hall alongside her students.
The student trip came about because of Herbel’s peer relationship with Dr. Tracey Gregg-Boothby, professor of music at Rose State College. A member of Oklahoma’s Wichita tribe, she has worked with Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate to transcribe and conserve tribal music, as well as perform it in Carnegie Hall through National Concerts. Gregg-Boothby invited distinct Oklahoma organizations to participate. Although COVID postponed the trip, Herbel’s dream for her students finally came true.
Herbel also became aware of a 2013 Westmoore alum, Preston Taylor, who made his Broadway debut in the current production of “The Great Gatsby.” The group had dinner with him and later attended the show to cheer him on.
The four-day trip was an opportunity to broaden students’ horizons and connect with others over what Herbel calls “the magic of music.”
“We’re not just singing from A to the end. We are discovering where the magic happens in that piece, small details that matter,” said Hebel. “Teaching them those little parts is like teaching them a foreign language. Music is a whole new set of code they can learn and take anywhere in the world.“
Hebel graduated with her vocal music education degree in 1996 from Oklahoma Christian University. She has been at Moore High School for 12 years but started in the district 18 years ago, first at Winding Creek Elementary.
“I had every intention of staying but I was the accompanist for the Moore High School choir part-time, just a couple hours a day a few days each week,” said Herbel. “I loved the high school setting and when a full-time position came available, I jumped at the chance.”
Herbel also holds a master’s in music education, a degree she had started years before but returned to finish at the University of Oklahoma in 2023.
“As a teacher, I don’t ever feel like I have arrived at my destination of all my learning,” she said. “It was also important to show my own students that discipline to finish what I started.”
Originally from Oklahoma City, music has always been part of Herbel’s family life. Her father, Jerry Cox, was a local youth minister in the 70s and 80s.
“I can remember, as a very little girl, sitting with my head to my dad’s chest, hearing the resonance of his voice throughout the whole church and thinking that was the most special thing ever,” she said. “He sang until the last minutes of his life. We were just raised with music and would sing in harmony on road trips, with my mom and my sister.”
Herbel began piano lessons in first grade. She began practicing two to three hours per day. Now, with a decade to go before retirement becomes an option, Herbel considers following in her mother’s footsteps, Lois Cox Marshall, who is still teaching at Southern Nazarene University at age 79.
“Do I still love it? Does it still feed my soul?” are the questions she asks herself when thinking of that eventuality. She is extremely grateful for the parent volunteers who helped organize, coordinate sponsorships and chaperone the trip.
Herbel looks forward to coordinating a regional trip next year, on a smaller scale, with the possibility of a larger scale trip in a few years. She now dreams of international travel as a future opportunity for her students, some of whom had never left Oklahoma before.
“Travel broadens your horizons and teaches you your world is much bigger,” she said. “Working with music from a living composer, meeting people from all over and seeing something totally different is just the beginning for our students.
“If students walk out of my class as musicians, fantastic, but my job is also to teach them to be good humans.”– SMS
By Staff Writer
