The chorus group is growing to large numbers under director Mr. Ed Liga.
Liturgical Music has grown to 54 students in the group this year under director Mr. Edward Liga, one of the highest turnouts they’ve had.
Liga says that moving the meeting time from homeroom to Community Time has increased student participation.
“A lot of guys were arriving to school past 8:00 and then couldn’t really fit that with their transportation,” Liga said. “But now that it’s during Community Time a lot more guys have been able to participate.”
Malvern’s Liturgical Music group is well known for their performances during chapel services and masses, but Malvern is not the only place where Liga has implemented a similar group.
“We had something very similar that I had created at Bonner,” Liga said. “There was no other time for me in the school schedule, I was teaching 5 classes a day, so there was really no other time to get anything started.”
Liga said that he presented the idea of a music homeroom to Bonner’s administration, who liked the idea. “It grew from the first year of being very very small to after a few years of doing it there were 60 guys in the homeroom.”
Liga brought the idea with him to Malvern. Malvern liked the concept, and the Liturgical Music homeroom was born.
“We started rehearsing in the Chapel since there was no Duffy Center at the time,” Liga said. “It started kind of small but it got really big, really fast.”
Junior RJ Napoli first got involved with Liturgical Music as a freshman.
“I would recommend it to others,” he said. “I think it’s pretty cool. It doesn’t matter if you can sing, it just matters if you want to sing awesome rock songs.”
Sophomore Alex Strimel said that Liturgical Music is unique to the area.
“I think we do a lot of great stuff in terms of performing at masses and different events throughout the school year.” sophomore Alex Strimel said, “I think that everyone during the class is really engaged in it and having fun and I think everyone really enjoys it.”
Sophomore Rhys Werny said he first got involved in Liturgical Music as a freshman, “When I heard about it I thought it would be a cool experience besides from Men’s Chorus to sing even with a larger group of guys at masses and other performances, especially Stations of the Cross, that’s really fun.”
The choir performs a version of the Stations of the Cross each year at Easter. Each station is complemented with a different song. Songs featured range from the Latin “O Fortuna” to Styx’s “Renegade.”
“If [students] are into singing and they just want to relax and try out new songs then it’s a good opportunity.” Werny said.
