SCC: Bishop Luers Midwest Show Choir Invitational 2008

The Luers-Midwest Show Choir Invitational (once known as The Luers-Midwest Swing Choir Invitational has been held every year since 1975, so this year is #34. It is the Granddaddy of ALL show choir competitions...

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From Mike Weaver's ACDA paper, The History of Show Choir:

"The foremost school of show choir education however, appeared in Fort Wayne, Indiana under the direction a catholic friar named Father Fred Link. The Bishop Luers High School Swing Choir Contest was started by Father Fred, as his friends and students call him. "I saw what was available for marching bands...I saw the excitement it created for students and audiences, alike...I thought there should be something like this for swing choirs." Father Link was vaguely familiar with the Northwest Swing Choir Festival, but he had a different vision of what the a show choir festival might be. The Oregon festival focused on vocal jazz ensembles, the Reno Festival had Vocal Jazz and Show-Pop, but the Bishop Luers contest was strictly about show choir, staging, choreography, costumes, and production.

The Bishop Luers competition can be credited with creating the format from which dozens of other competitions would copy. Traditional and jazz choral events existed, but here was a new venue, a showplace for choral groups to perform pop, rock, Broadway, country and jazz music. Furthermore, dynamic staging was not only allowed, it was encouraged.

...The contest was an instant hit and word spread fast. The news was quickened by television. By the second year (1976) WBGU-TV from Bowling Green, Ohio televised an edited version of the contest throughout the Midwest. By 1982, the Luers competition was aired in all 50 states. And by 1985, the 10th Annual Luers broadcasts won national recognition from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and was chosen to represent United States public television abroad. The contest was aired in the Soviet Union and met with wide acclaim from Russian television viewers.

Bishop Luers winners set new standards for swing choirs. The results, singing and dancing ability of groups became increasingly better with each year. Staging went from simple step-touch patterns to all out production jazz dance steps and tricks and lifts. To be successful at Luers, groups demonstrate skill in five areas: singing, playing (instrumental accompaniment), movement, showmanship and general effect (transitions, pacing, and show design). Luers required a balanced theatrical package made up several performance disciplines. Groups who were named Grand Champion of Luers received a six foot tall trophy and enjoyed a certain prestige in the show choir world. All in all, the ensembles who succeeded at Bishop Luers taught the show choir world new ways to view choral performance. Ron Hellems, director of the Carmel Ambassadors, in an interview with WBGU-TV said "ìTo win at Bishop Luers is to win anywhere." Because the contest was televised, directors and their groups became "stars" not only amongst their peers, but in their communities and nationwide, as well. By the mid-eighties Bishop Luers was the most prestigious event of its kind."

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Complete list of Grand Champions (and highlights):

1975 Marion 26th Street Singers (7 choirs compete on the tarped gym floor)
1976 Marion 26th Street Singers (15 choirs compete on a specially designed stage during the "Choirs-In-Concert" performance, five finalists compete again in the "Championship Sing-Off")
1977 Carmel Ambassadors (Participating choirs now number 20, "Championship Sing-Off" increased to 6. PBS records and airs finalists for the first time)
1978 Carmel Ambassadors (Instrumental awards given for the first time)
1979 Carmel Ambassadors ( Best show and Best Vocal trophies awarded for the first time. After being second for 3 years in a row, Marion never returns)
1980 Carmel Ambassadors (Number of choirs cut to 18; choirs must submit audition tapes for consideration)
1981 Edgewood Music Warehouse (Two non-Indiana choirs make finals for the first time: Iowa City West Good Time Company, and Mt Zion Swingsations; Carmel streak ends, but still first runners-up)
1982 Edgewood Music Warehouse
1983 Carmel Ambassadors (The Ambassadors make a triumphal return)
1984 Noblesville NHS Singers (A new group from the south enters, all the way from Clinton, MS. Attache places 13th. The PBS broadcast wins an international competion in Montreaux, Switzerland. Helps to end the coldwar when it is broadcast on Russian television)
1985 Carmel Amabassadors (Lafayette Jefferson First Edition makes its first appearance)
1986 Mt Zion Swingsations
1987 Mt Zion Swingsations (Last PBS broadcast)
1988 Lafayette Jefferson First Edition (First runner-up for only the second time, the Carmel Ambassadors don't compete again until 2007)
1989 Edgewood Music Warehouse (Warehouse on top again, the first time since the untimely death of choreographer Jim Savage)
1990 Lafayette Jefferson First Edition (Eric Van Cleave replaces LJ's founding director, J Kevin Butler)
1991 Lafayette Jefferson First Edition
1992 Lafayette Jefferson First Edition
1993 Lafayette Jefferson First Edition ( (FE ties Carmel's record of four-in-a-row)
1994 Lawrence Central The Central Sound
1995 Findlay First Edition (First non-Indiana school to win since 1987)
1996 Lawrence Central The Central Sound
1997 Lawrence Central The Central Sound (LC ties with Dekalb for first place, championship awarded to LC because of their higher vocal score)
1998 Findlay First Edition
1999 Dekalb Classic Connection (Last Indiana school to be crowned champion)
2000 Findlay First Edition
2001 Washington Momentum
2002 Findlay First Edition
2003 Findlay First Edition
2004 Findlay First Edition (Ties Carmel's 20 year record of 6 wins)
2005 Findlay First Edition (New record of most wins by one choir: 7)
2006 Mundelein Sound
2007 Mundelein Sound