On Monday December 12, during the winter choir concert, the Pella High School advanced choir performed, with soloists; Camden Holland, Jacob Rietveld, Tatum Carlstone, Ellie Wogen, 

Jasmine Naminga, Bodie Peters and Aleigha Ausman, would perform a medley between “Mary, Did You Know?” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” that was a year in the making, which was arranged by Senior Elijah Burrows.

All of this started to come together, when over a year ago Burrows got the inspiration for the song, Burrows states: “It was about a year ago I had the idea of combining them, (Mary, Did You Know? and Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence) and I thought that the music and the lyrics really complement each other well.”

Arranging music is no easy task, and it comes with its difficulties, as well as taking a lot of time. Burrows describes; 

“It takes a lot of work, that’s for sure, a lot of it involves writing something and getting it almost to perfection, then deciding you don’t like it and scrapping it and trying a new key just to see what happens. Also sometimes you’ll have to sit on a melody for a couple hours or even a couple of days.”

It is quite a reward for Burrows, to have his music performed by the choir. He gave Mrs. Robilliard creative freedom with his piece to change things as she saw fit. 

“It was really rewarding to see people put in all that work to bring my arrangement to life, I was super impressed with what everyone put into it,” said Burrows.

“To say they had done it justice, wouldn’t be doing it justice.” 

Burrows was able to keep his arrangement a secret, so this was his family’s first time hearing his piece. Burrows states; “I asked Mrs. Robilliard and a lot of people in the choir to not tell my family about it, and so I texted my mom right before we went on stage, and said, hope you don’t mind Christmas came early.” 

Burrows has a deep passion for music, and plans to continue making it in the future.

“It’s just kind of expressing something emotionally,  about getting a certain feeling that I can’t say verbally but getting the whole audience to feel it through the music, that is really cool.”