On Tuesday March 12, the Concert Choir traveled  to Westminster Christian Academy to compete in the annual Missouri State Festival. The choir received all superior ratings in the two categories of performance and sight-singing. They performed the Gloria from Schubert Mass in G as well as Carpenters of God arranged by Vijay Singh. In the latter performance, the men were praised for their tone quality.

Seniors Kristina Jordan and Daniel Kim were soloists in Schubert’s Gloria.

“The group sounded good. Daniel and I were both nervous for our solos. Everyone feels nervous in competition, but I think it went well. If we screwed it up, the whole group was going off of what we were doing. It was scary to perform in front of judges, but it was fun. I wasn’t looking at the audience; I was looking right at Mr. Anthony because I didn’t want to get off tempo. They clapped afterwards, so that was good,” Jordan said.

After the performance section of the festival, the choir went into another room to learn and perform, without any help from their director, a song they have never seen before in a four minute period. Choir teacher Eric Anthony chose to work for three minutes and have an extra minute to work out any kinks the choir came across after the first performance of the sight-singing.

“The sight singing portion was a lot easier than everyone expected.  It was pretty difficult last year, so it was a nice surprise to see a piece without all of the elements we had the last time,” senior soprano Kathryn Hunter said.

When the performing was over, the choir went into the theatre to see two other groups perform while they awaited the scores from the adjudicators. Before students departed, they wanted to know the scores they had earned. Ones, or superior ratings, were received from every judge resulting in a party for Concert Choir the next day.

“With the busy spring we had with the Masterworks concert, it was fun to sing the Schubert again, and to have more time to improve,” Anthony said, “Because they were more comfortable with the selections, they were able to do their best and avoid the panic that can come with a judged performance.”

The choir will be joined by the orchestra in a trip to San Antonio, in April, to compete in the Heritage Festival where they took the Sweepstakes Award last year in Washington, D.C. last March.