Chamber Choir goes to Districts

Margaret Oliphant
Video Editor

Choirrrrrrrr — Choir rehearses songs before performance. Photo provided by Jaylen Davis

Advanced choir students competed in the District singing and sight reading sheet music. The District competition was at Parkway Central, and was for students in the Saint Louis area.

The winner will go to the State competition at Mizzou University. The groups performed in front of three judges who are also Saint Louis teachers on April 26.

The group went to districts on March 8, where they received an exemplary score and will go to the state competition on April 26.

Students will perform as a whole choir and in groups of two to four. Choir director Jaylen Davis picked collegiate level songs for students to sing. Choir songs’ difficulty is ranked on a scale of one to five, anything above five has complex rhythms and harmonies, a mix of different tempos and time signatures, which makes it collegiate level.

In order to prepare the choir is in what students referred to as “Choir Hell Week,” where they performed for a different director in order to get new critiques on their singing, which is referred to as a clinic, a concert on March 13, with solo and ensemble.

Groups were made of two to four students, and songs were picked by Davis based on the singer’s abilities such as singing, sight reading, technique, hearing notes through a piano and leadership. Groups have been preparing since February by practicing in and out of school, taking notes on their music and talking about lyrics of songs.

“A big part of singing is putting emotion into what you’re saying because playing in orchestra or in band you don’t get the advantage of saying words,” senior Leah Slaughter said.

In the State competition in 2023 Chamber Choir got gold in singing, while getting the second highest score in sight reading.

This is the second and final competition of the year, after All State in January where the group received a superior score after competing against different high schools from around the state. Chamber choir is organizing a competition in Spain next year.