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Home > Archive > Apr 3, 2008

In Tune With Her Life
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Music is Annie Powell's forte.
A senior at Pine View High School, 18-year-old Annie is an accomplished pianist, and she is also enmeshed in choir at Pine View. She is a member of the concert choir and the Trilogy madrigal group, and Annie serves as this year's student director for the Pine View choirs. In that role, she is on-call should PVHS choir director Norman Lister ever need her to fill in. She also regularly directs section rehearsals for the choirs, helping her fellow students learn their parts when new music is introduced.
If he needs something taken care of, Lister knows that he can, with confidence, turn to Annie.
“You can give her something, and you know it will be done, and you know it will be done well, without a lot of bother,” he said. “She's very, very responsible.”
Annie is Pine View's Sterling Scholar in the music category this year, and she has been playing the piano for about 10 years, though she's a bit newer to vocal performance.
She had never seriously given singing a try before joining one of Lister's choirs as a sophomore, she said, but soon after starting up with that group, she discovered that she had an untapped passion and an aptitude for singing.
“It's really become one of my greatest loves,” she said.
Gifted both at piano and vocal music, Annie comes by her talents naturally, Lister said.
“She comes from a very wonderful, musical family,” he said. “Her mother is a very fine pianist, and her father is a very nice vocalist. There's been a lot of music in the family.”
Conducting herself in a way that would make her musical family proud, Annie is “remarkable,” Lister said, and “a really pleasant, conscientious, hardworking gal.”
“She's very, very talented and very disciplined, which is rare,” he said.
Annie was selected to lead her classmates as student choir director this year because of that talent and the admirable qualities she exudes.
“I knew she would be dependable. I knew the kids would respect her,” Lister said. “The kids do respect her and like her. She's not going to be overbearing or domineering, but she will do what's asked and do a really great job.”
An honor student with a 3.98 GPA, Annie is considering pursuing a music education degree in college after graduating from Pine View this year. She plans to emulate her teacher, Lister, if she does go into that profession, and she's already got a head start, as she has been teaching piano lessons to younger kids since middle school. As a teacher, she tries to inspire her students to greater heights in music, just as she has been inspired by her choir teacher these last few years.
“He has so much passion for the music, so much joy in teaching us that music,” Annie said. “He's helped me develop a greater love for it myself and also helped me realize my potential, which is kind of what I like to do with teaching piano – be able to help people find something that they're good in.”
Lister said Annie would be very dedicated as a teacher, should she decided to travel down that road, and she would work just as hard as an educator as she does now as a student.
Annie tentatively plans to attend Southern Utah University after graduating from high school. It's far enough from home that she can feel independent, she said, but close enough to home that she can still call on Mom and Dad for help when she needs it.
Though having a music-related career is foremost in her mind, Annie's metronome is still swinging back and forth between vocal music and piano, should she choose to become a teacher or any other type of music professional.
“That's kind of where I'm a little iffy,” she said. “I'm still trying to decide. I think I can probably do a little bit of both, and if I can, that would be ideal.”
Whatever she does, though, those who know her at Pine View have every confidence that Annie will do well, no matter what she pursues.
“She's an absolute pleasure, and she's really well respected by both her peers and all of the faculty and staff,” Lister said. “I'm just very impressed with her. I couldn't be more impressed, really.”
Annie is the historian for the National Honor Society at Pine View, and she also participated in cross country running earlier this year. Her parents are John and Lisa Powell, of St. George.

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