She has great posture and even better stage presence. When you see her you can see how confident and prepared she is. As she moves forward to the microphone–she takes her final breath and sings. Her beautiful voice rings across the room and the audience attentively listens.
Sonya Morales, a senior, has been in choir for four years. She has been heavily involved within our fine arts programs, and has been in chambers since sophomore year. Sonya has been able to achieve many accomplishments such as, ACDA show choir her sophomore and senior year, ILMEA vocal jazz 2 and regular honors all three years, and the All state musical her junior year.
Sonya explains how her passion for singing began. She says,“I grew up singing in church, and I don’t want to say I was left out, but I definitely wasn’t the main lead singer. I guess that kind of pushed me to want to be better. Of course, singing at church, your motive is not to be the best singer but to sing for the Lord. I wanted to sing for the Lord, and I wanted to get a song, and I want to sing in general. And I just feel like that grew only as I grew up.”
One of Sonya’s many big accomplishments was being cast in the IHSTF All-state musical. The All-state musical was “The Prom” and was casted with students across the state. She remembers the auditioning process. She says, “The nerves never go away. Every audition, even if you feel like it’s gonna be easy, the nerves are there for sure. The adrenaline hits, and you get the little shakes. But when I auditioned for All-state last year, I was so nervous. That was so scary because I wasn’t even sure if I should actually audition, because of the commitment and how professional it is, but Miss C was the one to motivate me to audition, and so I just did it anyway, and I just focused on having fun, and I ended up getting a role, which is so crazy!” Working on such a big production can be intimidating especially when you’re meeting new people. But, thankfully that wasn’t an issue for Sonya.“I just remember, how fun it was, how welcoming we all were with each other, and the morning warm ups or the scares when people’s voices were not there or just people getting caught by the train. The little mess ups. But that’s what made it perfect, if that makes sense.” she says smiling.
Sonya has participated in many productions and performances in and out of school. Performing is not easy: “It’s a process! Sonya says, “In everything you do, specifically singing, but in every area of your life, it’s a process. We all start somewhere. And of course, there’s going to be days where you lose your voice, or you get sick when you can’t be sick because you have a big performance coming up. There’s gonna be really rough moments, but it’s a process. Just keep pushing. You’re gonna get over it, and if anything, you’re gonna get better.”
Sonya goes on to talk about how she stays on track,“Of course there’s things that I really want to do. Like, I want to hang out with my friend Scarlet. I want to go out and have fun with her and my friends and just do things that I want to do, but there’s priorities, and you need to focus on what you need to get done, and then you can focus on having fun, you know, so just breathing through it and focusing.”
Although Sonya may be unsure of her plans for the future. She knows one thing for sure. She will continue to sing. “I cannot live the rest of my life without music. So even if I don’t plan to major in music in college, I definitely am going to minor, or it’s going to be incorporated into my profession in some way, somehow, because I can’t avoid it.”
No matter where Sonya ends up we know that her beautiful voice will continue to ring across any room she enters.
