Rieth Recital Hall welcomed friends and family of Sandy Hill on Sunday to a retirement reception celebrating her years of work with the Shout for Joy youth choir. The choir is part of the Goshen College Music Center Community School for the Arts and has students in 6th-8th grade. The college served refreshments as colleagues thanked Hill for her nearly two decades with the choir.

At the reception, Hill spoke to attendees briefly, thanking current and former singers and reflecting on some of her favorite memories as director. One such memory was the time Shout for Joy was featured in the 2010 premiere of “Requiem of the Innocent.” Jorge Muñiz, who composed the oratorio for orchestra and choir, was in attendance at the reception along with his wife.

Hill began her conducting career at the Wausau Conservatory of Music in Wisconsin where she directed a children’s choir alongside her sister. During this time, she met her husband Matthew Hill, chair of GC’s music department and Shout for Joy’s accompanist. After moving to Goshen, she taught voice for several years before taking the director position with Shout for Joy, a job that  she has held for the past 18 years.

During that time, the choir had the opportunity to collaborate with other ensembles and sing in a variety of unique venues. Sandy Hill listed a few of her favorites: the premier of Muñiz work, several appearances in GC’s long-running Afternoon Sabbatical recital/lecture series, concerts with the sibling trio, Girl Named Tom, in both 2024 and 2025, and the choir’s performance at the wedding of the Hills’ daughter.

Shout for Joy has also regularly performed at GC’s Festival of Carols. As Sandy Hill said, “Festival of Carols was a really unique and beautiful experience musically for the kids, and it was a great bonding time too … I think the fact that they got to perform alongside the college students and the college orchestra was a really neat experience — a once-in-a-lifetime experience for that age group.”

Though she is stepping away from conducting Shout for Joy, Sandy Hill’s vocal studio will remain open, and she will continue to pursue other musical ventures. She said, “I don’t even think of this as retirement. It’s just stepping down and making room for all the other musical things I do … primarily my private voice teaching, which I love doing. I also music direct a lot of musicals in the community.”

She hopes to spend her now-free Monday evenings with her husband, though her studio schedule has extended into that free time. Even so, she is looking forward to simply “going for a walk at 6:30.” Sandy Hill’s current project is music directing Godspell at the Goshen Theater, which will run Oct. 22-25.