On February 7th there was the All-District Choir Performance for the Treble and Mixed Chorus choirs at Blacksburg high school of Arts. The performers for All-District of course didn’t just show up there was auditions. “I think my audition went pretty well but the sight reading was questionable.”-Shelby Goudes (9) These auditions included sight reding which was nefarious for having many struggles. Sight reading is hard because they must keep in rhythm and pitch which is timed recording, so it’s difficult to get back on rhythm when you’re off. The other part of the audition is a song they sung called Blow Blow Thou’ Winter Wind which was significantly easier for most because they had individual voice tracks.
Those who passed auditions then were given music for their choir which was either sorted into treble SSAA or mixed SATB. Each student was given their respective music according to their choir with treble, and mixed both having six pieces of music, these students were given their music a month in advanced among song tracks to practice with. The idea was that the singers would practice and memorize the songs and then they would come to Blacksburg on February 6th to practice dynamics, add solos, and clean up rough edges. On the 7th they were supposed to do some last-minute practice maybe a few corrections and then preform.
“I thought that the quality of the performance was significantly higher than a normal high school choir, and I loved the song selection!” -Cassandra Barker (Professional Operatic Singer) The performance went very well for most everyone.