Children, Go Where I Send Thee: Choral Octavo SoundTrax CD

Schram's arrangement honors the spiritual's narrative power while making it singable for mixed choirs of varying experience levels. The SATB voicing balances independence with clarity, giving each section material that feels idiomatic without requiring advanced technique. Paired with the included SoundTrax accompaniment, this becomes a repertoire choice that rehearses efficiently and performs with genuine warmth.

Warm, grounded, and earnest. The traditional spiritual emerges through Schram's voicing with a conversational quality, as if the choir is recounting a story rather than performing a finished arrangement. There's joy in the simplicity and integrity of the setting.

This arrangement works for high school and adult choirs, as well as strong middle school ensembles with experience in spirituals and traditional music. Directors seeking a Christmas-season sacred piece that avoids the familiar organ-and-hymn sound will find this both refreshing and congregationally appropriate.

• Lean into the storytelling quality of the text. Each verse builds on the previous one, so shape your phrasing to support that narrative arc rather than treating each verse as identical.
• Balance the blend between upper and lower voices during the refrain. The harmony is most effective when no single line dominates; let the voices find their natural weight together.
• Use the accompaniment track during rehearsal to establish harmonic context, but consider pulling back the tempo slightly in performance to let the spiritual's call-and-response character breathe authentically.

Program this during the sacred portion of a holiday concert to create variety in texture and tone. It works especially well when paired with more contemporary sacred music, offering audiences a moment of reflection and tradition. The inclusion of the recorded accompaniment makes it practical for winter concert schedules when rehearsal time is limited.

• Singing spirituals with authentic phrasing and respect for the genre
• Balancing SATB harmony without one voice dominating the blend
• Following accompaniment in ensemble while maintaining independence
• Understanding narrative text structure and how to shape a multi-verse song