Since he started playing a trumpet in sixth grade, music has been a major part of Kyle Karum’s life.

In seventh grade, he tried out for a school musical for the first time.

He continued with musicals and band in high school and also added the French horn and joined choir.

Even though he had aspirations in his younger years of becoming an architect or a comedic actor, Karum decided his junior year to pursue a degree in music education.

He earned that from Western Michigan University, a well-known music institution, and received a lot of opportunities in the field of music.

After spending 2½ years as the vocal music director at Prairie Heights Community School Corp. in LaGrange, Karum moved to Bloomington and applied for a job at Seymour High School.

He is now wrapping up his first year as director of choral music and musical theater at Seymour.

“In my short time with the administration here and with who would become my colleagues, talking with them during the interview, I felt really at home here, and I felt like this was a great place to be,” said Karum, 28. “I was really relieved when I got the job not only because, ‘OK, now I have something,’ but also because I felt like this was a great fit both for the school program and for me.”

The Muskegon, Michigan, native said playing the trumpet was his first music-related experience. His first musical was “Schoolhouse Rock Live.”

“I was trying to get acting experience, and then they heard me sing, and they said, ‘You are pretty good at acting, but you’re going to sing this solo,’” he said. “In seventh grade, I was scared, deer in the headlights, and then I sang. My family saw it, and my dad was a singer in high school. They loved it, and so I just kept going, never stopped.”

He said his involvement in band, choir and musicals in high school helped him decide on a future career.

“It was about junior year of high school that I realized that music is where I was heading for sure,” he said. “I didn’t know what I’m going to do — I might be a performer, I might be a producer or whatever. I decided that I liked being in front of people, leading people and making music at the same time. My senior year was one English class, and the rest was music.”

After graduation, Karum began his music studies at Muskegon Community College before transferring to Western Michigan University.

There, he performed with various ensembles and studied under different conductors and teachers. He also was a music and visual instructor for high school marching bands and was a guest teacher for several school programs.

In those pre-internships, he taught general music at two schools and choral music at two other schools.

For an internship in his final semester, he taught choral music for Grades 6 through 12 at Pennfield schools in Michigan.

“The high school I was at, it was high quality, and it was a good program, and then I went to Western Michigan, which is a world-renowned music program,” Karum said. “It helped me transition in that I was expecting a high-quality music program, and I got it. I was very fortunate to be at both places.”

In college, one highlight was performing with a group at a national convention and receiving a standing ovation, which Karum said is pretty rare.

“I was very fortunate to have the leaders that I had there and the teachers,” he said. “They helped me grow musically as well as leadership-wise.”

Karum graduated from Western Michigan in December 2012 and had his first full-time job at Prairie Heights in January 2013. That involved teaching Grades 5 through 12 — two general music classes and five choir classes.

He also was on a team of three people who helped with musicals. He was the musical director, which involved teaching the music and vocal parts of a show and organizing the pit. The others involved were the head director and the tech director.

“It helped me in that I knew what I was listening for, I knew what things should sound like, I knew how to get things there and musically, I knew how to lead groups of students,” Karum said of his first full-time job.

“Of course, that goes with saying there were a lot of things that I didn’t know and still don’t know,” he added. “As a teacher, I think it’s important to grow every day. You are always learning. Never get too content with where you are. Never get complacent. Classroom management was something that I really had to work on.”

In the spring of 2015, Karum’s wife, Kelsey, landed a job as a career adviser for the School of Informatics at Indiana University, so they moved to Bloomington.

June was a busy month for them, as they signed a lease and moved into a home, Kyle Karum had two interviews and landed the job at Seymour, they were involved in two car wrecks three days apart and then got married two days later.

At Seymour High School, Karum leads four choirs in five classes. The beginning women’s choir consists of 100 girls split into two classes; the men’s choir has 42 members; Sirenas or advanced women’s choir has 20 girls; and show choir, or advanced SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), has 20 boys and 20 girls.

Karum said the men’s choir only had 19 members last year.

“Being a guy helps,” he said, as the previous choral director was a woman. “Every once in a while, we’ll just sit and talk sports, and we’ll talk about other stuff. I think that helps them just kind of go,’You know what? It’s OK to be a guy and be in choir.’ I was, and I turned out OK.”

The show choir puts on a spring musical each year. Karum chose “Working,” and performances are at 7:30 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday in the high school auditorium.

In the afternoon Saturday, Corrine Reed, the head director at Prairie Heights, is bringing her students to Seymour for a workshop with Karum’s students. They also will attend the Saturday night musical.

Then April 23, the show choir will sing three songs at the Indiana State School Music Association choral festival at Columbus East High School, where they receive feedback from judges and could earn awards.

In the fall, all choirs were a part of a preview concert, where each sang two or three songs. Then at Christmastime, a concert featured the choirs and specialty acts.

Karum said his goal is for the program to improve every day. He said he would like to see a choir perform at a choral conference or a music educator’s conference and take a domestic trip to perform.

Since there have been different choral directors each of the past four years, Karum said he plans to stick around and help develop the program.

“I really like it here,” he said. “This is a great program and has a lot of potential to be even better, so I want to be a long-term solution for this school and this program.”

The students’ work ethic also has impressed Karum.

“They love music, they love performing, they love being here, they love being with their friends, and you can see that passion onstage,” he said. “You can see it in their faces when they are performing, and they want this to be great. That means a lot to me because not everywhere do you get kids who work this hard and who are this talented.

“I’m very proud of them for coming along,” he added. “I tell them every day, ‘We got better today. We’re going to keep improving as a group what we’ve got to do together.’”

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Name: Kyle Karum

Age: 28

Hometown: Muskegon, Michigan

Residence: Bloomington

Education: Mona Shores High School (2006); Western Michigan University (bachelor’s degree in music education with choral/general emphasis, 2012)

Occupation: Director of choral music and musical theater at Seymour High School

Family: Wife, Kelsey Karum

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For information about the Seymour High School choral department, visit seymourhschoirs.weebly.com.

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