Choir seniors depart with final song

Let the years we’re here/ Be kind, be kind

Let our hearts, like doors / Open wide, open wide

Settle our bones like wood/ Over time, over time

Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine. 

These are the words one can hear passing by the choir room any given weekday morning, the class harmonizing to the lyrics. The song titled “North” was chosen as this year’s senior song, a time honored tradition where the choir sings one song at commencement. 

Every year, choir director Elliot Kranz picks out one song for the end of the year to serve as the summation to the students’ three years in the choir program. In addition to being sung at commencement, the students also will perform this song at the final choir concert on Wednesday, May 26. Tickets will be available for choir members and their families. 

The song “North” is performed by the band Sleeping at Last and is written by Ryan O Neal. In an interview with Genius, O’Neal said that, “My wife and I recently bought our first house. In the first few days of moving in, I took a break from carrying boxes and wrote this song. It felt only fitting to write a song about our new home, as the first song I’ve written inside it.”

The song itself is made up of strong harmonies and powerful lyrics about how the end of something always encompasses the beginning of something else. The one line in particular, “Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine,” is a reference to a scene in It’s A Wonderful Life, where at a housewarming they give the Martini couple bread, salt and wine, and say “Bread that this house may never know hunger, salt that life may always have flavor, and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”

As the choir seniors bid farewell to their high school careers, wish them luck at their final performance at their concert and commencement.