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Light Everlasting EP fundraiser for The Monte Vista High School Choir

Light Everlasting Choir Blog

September 6, 2026 by Stephen in Choirs ⋅ Events ⋅ Italy ⋅ Music Composition ⋅ News ⋅ Recording ⋅ Travel ⋅ Tuscany ⋅ World Music
GoFundMe Monte Vista High School Choir and Orchestra Italy Trip for 2027

I am excited to announce the release of a brand-new recording called Light Everlasting EP, featuring the Monte Vista High School Choir and Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bigger.  Buy the Light Everlasting EP and help fund the Monte Vista High School Choir’s 2027 trip to Italy.

The official release date is October 1st at Monte Vista’s Gospel Choir and Orchestra Concert. This year also happens to be Monte Vista’s Centennial Celebration! This school was founded in 1926 and is thriving even after 100 years! Now, that is amazing, and I get to be a part of the ongoing legacy of excellence in the arts and music here at MVCS. Anyway, more on that another time.

Last fall of 2025, our choir was honored to record at the legendary Skywalker Sound Studios. Many familiar film scores and artists’ records were recorded in the same studio where our students sang. Our plan is to use the sale of this Choir project to help give scholarships to students for assistance in raising funds for our upcoming choir and orchestra trip to Italy in 2027. (More info at the end of this blog).

Monte Vista Centennial Choir GoFundMe Italy 2027

Monte Vista Centennial Choir

Monte Vista Choir recording Light Everlasting at Skywalker Sound, November 2025.

The choir recorded six of my original compositions, which feature choir and orchestra. One song, YaLaLay, is in Swahili and is a rhythmic world music style; the other songs range from Gospel to classical to modern choral music. It was an amazing experience for our students to be in such a famous studio with award-winning engineers and world-class recording gear. There were 17 microphones on the choir, including a few mics pointed at the back wall, which were recording the reflections of the sound to be blended into the overall acoustical ambience. In the photo, you can tell just how amazing that room is just by looking at it. Considering the long list of world-class recording artists who have worked in that studio, there’s no doubt it will be a lifelong memory for all of us!

Beth and I spent 2 weeks this summer at Skywalker Ranch. I had the honor of mixing the choir and tracks during that time. We were able to view several pre-release movies in the on-site theater, like Disclosure Day, Toy Story 5, Minions and Monsters, and Moana (the live-action version). We were told that the theater is one of the best movie viewing facilities in the world. I can honestly say it was definitely the best theater I have ever visited! There were members in the audience whose names appeared in the credits… that was super cool! When the names rolled by, there was thunderous applause.

This was indeed a special honor. You might wonder how we were able to do this… A great friend of mine from Nashville, Jimmy Stabile, whom I met through Pyramid Recording Studios on Lookout Mountain many years ago. Jimmy engineered many albums by The Band, Alman Brothers, Joe Walsh, Stray Cats, and many more! He taught me so much about recording. When I moved to California in 2003, Jimmy connected me with their head engineer, Leslie Ann Jones.  I had the privilege of meeting her in person when I was invited to Skywalker to observe a symphony recording composed and conducted by my friend Robert Litton. I got to sit in the recording room while the orchestra recorded… it was an amazing experience! Then in January 2026, the Monte Vista Choir participated in a choir festival in Sacramento at Jessup University. Dr Tom Rusica is the head of that music department and was kind enough to give us a reference to Skywalker. I reached out to Leslie Ann Jones, and she was gracious enough to let us book our session. Our engineers, Dann Thompson and Robert Gatley, were so much fun to work with. I learned a ton, and also learned that I already knew a ton about recording and using Pro Tools. It was a red-letter experience in my years of production and music mixing… And the rest is history!

Please consider donating to the GoFundMe, which is intended to raise scholarship funds for the students to be able to travel to Italy and perform! This is another amazing opportunity for these young musicians to not only visit, but share their music in beautiful cathedrals and performance halls in Tuscany and Rome. Or, simply by purchasing the Light Everlasting Choir EP, you will be helping these students share their music with the world!

For more information on how you can contribute or purchase the Choir recording, please visit the GoFundMe page. If you make a donation of $100 or more, you will get a coupon code that will allow you to get the download for free!

Light Everlasting - The Choral Music of Stephen L. Bigger. Photo by Beth Bigger

Monte Vista High School Choir Italy Fundraiser 2027

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