Over the past two weeks I’ve had the opportunity to participate in two state-wide music festivals. The first was with my high-school choir the second was with an All State Choir. My choir director submitted a recording for the first festival and I auditioned personally for the second. I was very happy that my choir made it to CMEA (Colorado music educators association)- I talked about CMEA in my last post- but I was extremely proud that I made it into the Colorado All State Choir. I had been preparing for the Colorado All State audition for months and I actually didn’t get in the previous year.
All State was just last weekend. All the high school students in my school district that had made it into one of the three All State Choirs took a bus down to Denver last Thursday. I have to admit I was very excited to miss school that Thursday and Friday. I had a great time at All-state. I was in the tenor/bass choir and our conductor was Dr. Ethan Sperry (I’m pretty sure thats how you spell it.)We had some really cool songs. Dr. Sperry actually helped arrange one of them.
One of the unique aspects of All State choirs is that you have less than 3 days to rehearse as a full choir. After the auditions, recordings of each part are posted to the Colorado All State choir website. I was aware that I was expected to learn the music on my own by the time the festival started; however, I was not aware that second auditions were also part of the festival. I’m very proud that I only panicked a little. My fears were unfounded, though, and I was not sent home because I didnt know the music well enough.
After several hours of rehearsal, We watched the All State jazz choirs perform. They were fantastic and it would have been a very enjoyable concert if I hadn’t been sitting on the floor unable to move because there were so many other people there. The next day was rehearsal after rehearsal; and while the rehearsals were actually very enjoyable, 10+ hours of rehearsal was predictably exhausting.
We were also encouraged to use the stairs in the 16 floor hotel all of the 600 choir members were staying in because the elevators were always packed. As you might imagine, this gave me quite the work out as my room was on the 8th floor and the rehearsal room was on the 3rd.
By the time of the rehearsal my legs and throat were sore. The performance still went really well. I enjoyed my choir’s performance the most out of all three choirs. I’m not sure if that was because it was the best choir or if it was because I just prefer men’s choirs. Some of my friends from mixed choir decided to design a shirt with a quote from their director.
Blind Music 