ARTS ENCORE
‘You’ve Got the Pipes, Man’ Three Rivers native touring with Chanticleer
Brian Powers
LISA MACKINDER
Brian Powers
by
Throughout
elementary school, Logan Shields toted home handwritten notes from music teachers proclaiming his astounding pitch and ability to sing soprano. But it wasn’t until his junior year at Three Rivers High School that this now-countertenor for the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer finally joined the school’s choir. In doing so, he discovered he also had a natural gift for the formal study of music — “like reading music, understanding music theory and understanding intervals and things,” Shields explains. “So, I thought, ‘If I’m really good at this, maybe I should focus on this.’”
34 | ENCORE OCTOBER 2017
Above: Logan Shields on the stage at Chenery Auditorium, where he first saw Chanticleer and returned to perform last year as a member of that vocal ensemble. Opposite page: Shields, pictured in the back row, third from the left, has toured the world as a member of Chanticleer.
For the next two years, Shields sang with the Men of the Aristocrats, composed of the male members of the Three Rivers High School Choir and led by the choir’s director, Joel Moore. The ensemble participated in the Michigan Youth Arts Festival, which helped Shields realize that singing was his forte. “Obviously I knew I could sing and that I had a voice that people liked to hear,” Shields says. “But now I had — in a more academic