Choral Festival

We're heading into that season known as March Madness. For most people it refers to the basketball teams as they head into their tournaments and prepare to close out their season, hopefully with some playoff games, and perhaps a title and trophy.

For musicians March Madness means choir festival season. I find the preparations to be exciting, perhaps where I do my best work. It's fun to have a nicely trained group ready their selections and practice sight reading. The challenges come along when you plan to take the "less than experienced" choir into festival. For many students this is their first time at festival, so they don't really appreciate the specifics of the preparation process until they've actually gone through the festival.

Some years it is more of a chore than others. This school year my advanced students are doing well, musically and theory-wise. My concert choir has both of their songs prepared nicely (which scares me a little bit since the competition is still more than three weeks ago). Their sight-reading is improving steadily. For the most part their attitudes and efforts are also where I'd like them to be. Hopefully this will continue and they will peak just at the right moment. It would be interesting to find out exactly how many of them took the sight reading home to practice over mid-winter break. I'd like to think 80%, but we'll see.