Being a first-year choir student at TUHS, I was mildly surprised to have made it to honor choir. I had only about three months of technical training at the time of the audition, and the others auditioning may have been singing since they could start singing. I was surprised, not as much that I made honor choir, but more that I scored in the top 10% of my section and made in the SATB choir, which is widely regarded as the best choir at the event. I guess a 91/100 is something to be proud of.

After working with the TUHS choir, which has around 24 male and female singers, it was a culture shock to be suddenly thrust into a 100-student choir, which was filled with Central California’s highest-scoring singers in the high school age. It was the good kind of culture shock though–their voices filled the air, permeated the atmosphere, and I was a part of it.

Our conductor was none other than Dr. Jennifer Garrett, the choir conductor at Bakersfield College. The TUHS choir had just gone to a choir festival at BC, where I saw BC’s choirs perform, so seeing her again was something I was pleasantly surprised about.

I think my least favorite part of the experience was that some of the people who were selected should not have been selected, in my opinion. Some of the tenors (my section) did not know their parts until the day of the concert. They did perform it well at the concert, but I wish they would have known their parts in the beginning.

My favorite part was not the music, even though that music was simultaneously the hardest and most fun music I’ve ever performed for choir. My favorite part of the entire thing is that I was not the highest-scoring person there. There were tenors in my section who scored 94, 95, or 96 out of 100 possible points. I know what I biffed in the audition and how to improve upon it if I get another chance to audition for anything else, and that I can improve.

Overall, honor choir was nothing short of an amazing experience, and I hope Taft sends more kids to honor choir in the future.

Copy/paste these links into a new tab if you’re interested in watching the performances.

Women’s Choir: https://drive.google.com/open?id=19N0A_oA9esc_-LjZQ655LjjD0HkZeFdG

Men’s Choir: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11QT8NNy9NDV2Vgo5_ZU_4erE1RYIH5ZG

Men/Women’s Choir: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dDOVw-a3eBX_bv81WGy_OIKdqMaj7IjF