From fall pro to choir concerts, senior Griffin Crowe has been involved greatly in choir and school musicals ever since sixth grade. Crowe has had a role in the musical every year since he first started participating in middle school.
“Freshman year I played Maurice in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Sophomore year, I played Kevin G. in ‘Mean Girls.’ Junior year, I played Max Detweiler from the ‘Sound of Music,’ and in middle school I played the Genie from ‘Aladdin’ and Olaf in ‘Frozen,’” Crowe said.
Crowe has been singing for awhile, but his musical journey started before his interest in choir.
“In fifth grade, I tried band, I just didn’t see it going well for me. And then in sixth grade I did choir, and I was really into the music that we did and just singing in general,” Crowe said.
Now in high school, Crowe is in many choir classes, not just one general choir class.
“I am in the symphonic choir (junior and senior choir) and vocal ensemble, the audition choir, and I am in Camerata (before-school choir) as well.
Crowe multitasks sometimes, staying productive academically while listening to the music he is working on in choir.
“I will say that the songs we sing are very good study music,” Crowe said.
Outside of school choirs, Crowe has been a member of the OMEA all-state choir during his sophomore, junior and senior years.
“It’s very honorable. It’ll be three days, and then we’ll go and have the performance. Usually they’ll give us the music way beforehand, like two or three months beforehand, and we should be practicing. A lot of people don’t, and just wait till, like, the three days we get there and then we practice it. Each practice is very long. It’s like seven hour practices, and then we’ll have the performance,” Crowe said.
To become a part of the all-state choir, there is an audition process in May the year prior.
“You choose a song of your choice that’s a skilled song that your teacher provides you, like Dr. Moss would recommend, and you just sing that song. There’s no sight reading,” Crowe said.
Also requiring an annual audition, Crowe has been part of many musicals.
“We usually do a workshop before the musical during November, just to get a good look at the audition. Then we audition around late November, and then we have practices every day from 3:15 to 6:30, and each day depends, either you have just music in general, or we just have acting practices and then blocking scenes. And that’s every weekday all the way from December up until February,” Crowe said.
While there are long practices daily for the musical, that does not limit Crowe’s passion for fitness. He lifts e,very day at the Power Shack Gym in Hilliard.
“Because it goes till 6:30, I just go straight to the gym after the practices. It’s very hard, and it’s very annoying. But it is what I want to do. I know it’s hard now, but I will thank myself later in the future for it,” Crowe said.
Although it can be hard, it has been a priority to Crowe for a while now. His favorite lift is hammer curls, and through his consistent dedication to lifting, he now benches 225 pounds on incline.
“In seventh grade, I was really overweight. I didn’t like the way I looked. In eighth grade, I got really influenced just by TikTok, just seeing people looking really nice. And I really got inspired by that. And I was like, wow, I really want to do that. Since eighth grade, I was obviously in and out. I was doing other stuff, but I started locking in really in 2023, in the fall, because I was like, I really want to do this. This is a passion I want to do because I don’t want to ever go back to being like that,” Crowe said.
Crowe hopes to take this passion for lifting forward with him into his future, hoping to eventually become a personal trainer.
“Next year, I’m really gonna try to get a coach to help me become a personal trainer,” Crowe said.
In addition to his ambitions of personal training, Crowe hopes to not abandon all his work with vocals in his future endeavors.
“I’m also trying to get into voice acting. I’m going to go to [Ohio University] mainly for public advocacy to help me just start advertising. I have a guy that I know who does voice acting, and could help me become a voice actor for animations and advertising and stuff like that. I think that’d be really fun,” Crowe said.
