By Lisa Duckers
Staff Writer
The girls of the Mira Costa Advanced Women’s Choir came home victorious on Saturday after they achieved 2nd place in the Southern Women’s Golden State competition at Santa Monica High School.
Each year, 10 women’s choirs from across Southern California are invited to compete with each other at a designated location. The top five from the previous year are automatically invited back and five more are specially selected to add to the competition.
Because the Advanced Women’s Choir secured 4th place in the competition last year, they were automatically invited back for the 2011 competition. This year, they came extremely close to 1st place but ultimately came out at second.
“We were 9 points out of first place out of a total of 900 points with three judges. So it was close,” Costa choir director Mr. Hayden said.
The Golden State competition is unique in that there is a required piece of music that all choirs must sing in the competition. This allows each competing choir to be compared to the fullest. This year the piece sung by all the choirs was “Cantate Domino” by Heinrich Schutz.
“I definitely learned from the other choirs’ performances and from our own,” senior and choir member Sarah Slappey said.
The other pieces performed at the competition by the Advanced Women’s Choir were very well selected. The songs performed included “Suscepit Israel” from J.S. Bach’s vocal composition Magnificat and “The Witches Chorus” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera adaption of Macbeth.
“The girls sang beautifully and did very, very well,” Mr. Hayden said. “We are very happy and look forward to next year.”
*Cantate Domino