Camas choir students branch out, work with music pros

It’s the first period of the school day, and the students in Camas High School choir director Ethan Chessin’s only all-male choir have immersed themselves in a song, “Down to the Bottom of the Sea,” composed by 2022 CHS graduate Brian Bishop and inspired by Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, “Frankenstein.”

Although the subject matter is somber — “The piece is about the monster near the end of the book … who decides to basically commit suicide (and is) ‘borne away by the waves and lost in the darkness and distance,'” explains Bishop, a Clark College student who has returned to his alma mater to work with Chessin’s current crop of singers — the students are having fun with the material, encouraging one another and belting out the last line of the song, “down to the bottom of the sea,” in unison.