Valencia High School’s Two N’ Four Choir might not be able to meet in person, but they have found a way to keep the music going even during the “Safer at Home” order.

Christine Tavares-Mocha, the choir teacher at Valencia High School, normally teaches about 185 students in five different choirs during the course of her day. Now with the quarantine order in place, she has had to get creative in getting to teach and rehearse with her students.

Instead of walking into a classroom, Tavares-Mocha boots up her computer and launches Zoom, the faces of her students displayed over five different screens, all ready to learn a piece to sing together.

“We’ve been brainstorming on ways to stay connected,” said Tavares-Mocha. “It’s rough because when you ask the students how they are, they all go, ‘we’re good.’ And then the truth comes out, in the chat bar on the bottom saying, ‘this is a really hard time, I don’t know what to do.’ It’s been rough.”

Although not experiencing learning face-to-face learning is a very different experience for this subject, the Valencia High Choir has made the most of the experience. Students have been able to learn from guest lecturers who drop in on the conference calls, such as a talent agent, Valencia Choir alum Edward Nelson – the winner of the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup, and Broadway actress and Saugus High alum Mandy Gonzalez.

Among the many projects that the choir has kept going, is the decision to put out a performance video from quarantine. The students sang “Refugee,” an original song written by Tavares-Mocha, and arranged with assistance from Kerry Marsh.

“We had to do this. I could not let this moment pass for them because this is something that they need to keep,” said Tavares-Mocha. “That shows how they overcame the hardest year that they ever went to school or that I’ve experienced as a teacher.”

The a capella piece was performed by Valencia High School’s Two N’ Four Jazz Ensemble, including; Etienne Cheshire, Amber Griffith, Mason Mull, Youngjin Kim, Sofia De La Cruz, Luke Haslam, Cameron Smith, Pilar Petroski, Matthew Morgenstern, Grace Evans, Sydney Makar, Joshua Kwock, Denise Nunez, Marcus Espinosa, Matthew King, Mis Gutierrez, Samantha Anderson, and Rykah Childs.

“We had a really rough year with the Saugus shooting… and we had the fires… all this stuff that has been going on at the same moment,” said Tavares-Mocha. “You have two choices; to either do something, or to sit there and be in the doom and the gloom. It’s funny because I think we’re all in both places at the same time. In order to be productive and see past that, I think you have to be okay with being in the grief of what we’ve lost for this year.”

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