Costa Choir travels to perform in San Jose

Kimi Danei

Staff Writer

Costa’s choir performed in the State Conference at the California Choral Directors Association conference at Saint Joseph Basilica cathedral in San Jose on March 13-16, to share their pieces and compete among other schools.

Choral Union auditioned for this conference last spring by sending an audition tape to the organization. The choir was 1 of 8 choirs accepted out of the 40 choirs who auditioned from all around the state of California.

“Choirs from middle school, high school, community college, university, community choirs, church choirs all were invited to submit recordings to audition,” Hayden said. “CCDA selected 8 choirs from over 40 choirs that auditioned and choral union, our advanced SSAA(womens) choir is one of those 8.”

The choir sang six very different pieces including, “Stars” by  Ēriks Ešenvalds, an Italian piece called, “Nò, Di Voi Non Vo’ Fidarmi” by G.F. Handel, and “Crossing the Bar” by Gwyneth Walker. They performed songs from their winter concert and added three new pieces which they have been practicing for the past few months.

“We’re working very hard to be the best we can be, knowing we will be performing for choral directors from all across the state, who understand choral music very deeply.” Hayden said. “It really isn’t any different than anything else we do because we always try to be the best we can be.”

The choir spent the first day of the trip in rehearsal, practicing for their performance and spent the remainder of days performing in front of adjudicators and watching other choirs perform. They attended workshops hosted by different musical professors from around the state and learned about various topics of choral music.

“[Students] will be part of the conference when they’re not performing so they’ll go to these interest sessions on different topics of choral music, they’ll go to concerts of other choirs that were selected,” Hayden said. “Then Friday they’ll go on to San Francisco to do some sight seeing on the wharf and they have a dinner cruise Friday night and we come back on Saturday.”  

This was the first year the association held a state-wide conference. The choir decided to attend the conference because of the great opportunity to perform in front of peers and choral directors from all across the state.

“The CCDA, which is a state-wide organization decided to create a statewide conference for choirs to perform,” Hayden said. “ I wanted us to go because it’s a wonderful opportunity to perform for your peers on a statewide level in a wonderful venue.”

Students really enjoyed sharing their pieces they’ve worked so hard on with the audience and spending time with each other.

“Other than performing, the thing I’m most excited for is a dinner cruise night that we are doing in the San Francisco Bay” said Choral Union member and senior Lucy Atkinson. “That is going to be a fun end to the trip.”