This past January, select students of the Shaler Area Choir performed at the District 1-Region 1 District Festival for the PMEA event.
PMEA (Pennsylvania Music Educators Association) is where students from different schools come together to become a “new choir”. Districts recently took place January 8th and 9th at McKeesport High School.
This year the attendees were seniors Adam Zang, Sydney Gross, and Abby Tepshich; juniors Brandon Aryee, Alexis Bankowski, Emily Bedeck, Elizabeth Dunlevy, Abby Walker, and Aubrielle Costic; and sophomores Tyler Swartzendruber and Logan Tepshich. PMEA isn’t just a choir. Bedeck was part of the District Festival playing the piano as an accompanist.
All attendees got accepted into Regions, which will be taking place on February 21st at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in New Castle, Pa. Choirs from all over will be rehearsing separately, until February 19 and 20 where they will rehearse together at Mohawk High school.
“The opportunity of being able to sing with other schools with very good singers seemed amazing,” Logan Tepshich said. “I hope to gain more practice in singing and meet new people from different places in the choir and music area.”
Last May, Shaler Area Choir Director Mrs. Kristin Tepshich started handing out materials to students interested in trying out for this year’s festival. The students had all summer and fall to prepare for the audition, which took place in November and December.
To audition, students would go to an assigned school with judges that had their backs turned, similar to the show “The Voice”. The judges would tell the auditioner an excerpt from one the pieces that they learned to qualify for Districts, with the same process happening for Regions and All State.
“When it comes to the actual audition itself, you go into three different rooms with judges who have their backs turned to you. You sing and the next day or so you know if you’ve gotten in or not, and if you have, you audition again for the next level which in this case would be Regions, then States,” Dunlevy said.
Performing at this festival is a wonderful opportunity for music departments all over locally to become one new group, and meet new people with the best of the best directing. This year, the conductor was the Director of Choral Activities at Penn State.
“Students can come together from a variety of different schools across the state and learn better techniques from one another and the conductor,” Swartzendruber said.
Even with professional training and the same festival, no year is the same. It is always a new choir, even if the same schools are attending.
“It’s always new music and new people, no matter what you do whether it’s a choir or a sport, the people you do it with will change each year and you will most likely never see them all together ever again. Every year you sing with a different amazing group of people with amazing new music,” Dunlevy said.
Even with different audition songs for each student, “I Will Sing” was a favorite for many members of the Shaler Area Choir. Although only excerpts were picked from the song for auditions, the entire song, along with many others were played all the way through at the festival.
“The song has some melodies and a good meaning overall, and it sounded pretty good once we came together as a whole choir,” Swartzendruber said.
Besides the all-around favorites, the choir made any piece thrown at them sound beautiful.
“One of the pieces they sang was called ‘Os Justi’ by Anton Bruckner. Just beautiful. I don’t have any other words. I didn’t even know he wrote that much choral stuff, which I guess was a huge miss on my part considering how much I love and listen to his orchestral works. It feels weird to only call out the acapella pieces since I didn’t play any of them, but I can’t not talk about them, they’re fantastic,” Bedeck said.
