High School choir students to perform at Foreigner concert

Colla Voce and the B-Tones will sing at Pavilion

By Jean Jacques Bohl

The internationally known rock band Foreigner will play a concert at the Sun Valley Pavilion on Saturday, Aug. 20. This concert will also have a local twist. Wood River High School students will perform Foreigner’s classic hit “I Want To Know What Love Is” and for their efforts will receive a $500 donation from the band for its appearance onstage.
Last spring, Max Stimac, WRHS choir instructor, was contacted by John Lappen, Foreigner’s road manager, about having choir students sing onstage with the band.
“It came out of the blue,” Stimac said.
Initially, Lappen was looking at choirs in Twin Falls, but he heard good things about the Wood River High School program and decided to give the local kids a chance to shine.
Twenty-five student members of the girls’ choir, Colla Voce, and the boys’ group, the B-Tones, will perform. This one song is always sung by student choirs in all Foreigner performances.
The students are very excited by this opportunity, Stimac said. And he was extremely grateful for the opportunity to showcase his talented students. These choir students are only some of the 90 music students Stimac teaches at WRHS.
“Any time we can give kids an opportunity to sing, especially on a professional stage, we are really excited for them,” Stimac said.
He hopes that the exposure will generate even more interest in the music program.
Lappen said that Foreigner and its charity partner, The Grammy Foundation, have a strong commitment to make music education part of high school curriculum. To raise money for this initiative, “Music In The Schools,” the choir students will sell Foreigner CDs before and after the concert. The operation is now in its seventh year and has so far raised over $1million distributed to financially strapped music programs all over North America.
The Foreigner concert will be a benefit for the 39th annual Killebrew-Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament. The celebrity tournament raises funds for leukemia and other cancer research.