This year’s holiday concert will have a surprising ending, according to Nick Juknelis, choir director.

Juknelis plans an annual surprise for the holiday choir concert and this year he’s coordinated with LZHS staff to join the student choir in singing a holiday song at tomorrow night’s concert.

There are 40 staff members that showed interest in joining a staff choir, according to Juknelis, and about 18 are involved in the holiday concert.

“I think it will be successful! I think the students will like to see that the staff got together and hopefully other staff members will see what we did too, which will be unique,” Juknelis said.

As this is a surprise for the students and audience, very few people know about the upcoming event. Michaella Andersen, senior Concert Choir and Blue Notes member, is one of the few that has known about the event from the beginning.

“I think it’s a great idea. As people go into college and study what they want to study, for instance, teachers, they may not have been in choirs that they were in possibly in high school. So by bringing a choir among all these teachers possibly brings back a prior passion that they might have had,” Andersen said.

Depending on how well the staff-integrated coir goes, Juknelis may continue a staff only choir for special events.

“Right now they’re going to perform at our holiday concert and they’re going to perform alongside our students, then we’ll see how it goes from there,” Juknelis said.

Every year, Juknelis plans a different surprise for the holiday concert, all from different inspirations.

“There was a great show on BBC called The Choir and it totally changed the image of about singing was like.  It’s all about how the power of singing together brings people together and just reinvents the community,” Juknelis said. “That always got me thinking that we should do that here.”