The All-State choir is a competitive measure process that combines the best young singers to fabricate the most prestigious chorale in Texas. To make the state choir, the students must pass through many rounds with competitive contestants. Raina Zhang, a third-year contestant, shares her perspective on the process and the lessons to take away from it.
“The process is a little sketchy,” Zhang said. “Once you get to the region, it’s really fun.”
This process allows the students to explore their talents and become well-rounded singers. Along with this, they learn how to challenge themselves in fields they were not confident in before.
“I’ve learned how to navigate more difficult music and I’ve learned different rhythms,” second-year contestant Avery Lindsey said. “I’ve gotten better at sight reading, and I think I learned more about my voice.”
Besides school work, the amount of pressure to be accepted to move on to the next round affects the performance by giving students increased self-doubt and insecurity.
“You tend to self-judge, saying things like ‘Oh my gosh I did so bad, I probably didn’t make it,’” Zhang said. “But every time I’ve thought that I’ve usually done a lot better than I thought.”
The choir directors are the backbone of students during this tremendous program process: they put all they can to ensure their singers make it far. It’s important to highlight the effort they contributed to the program.
“The directors are super helpful; they have sectionals after school,” Lindsey said. “In these sessions, they can teach you in smaller groups, so you get more one-on-one work.”
Besides extra practice, these sessions allow for relationships between director and student to develop that lead to a greater understanding of the pieces of music.
“Sectionals has made me feel more open to ask questions and I feel like I have a communicative relationship with the director,” Saranya said.
After a decade of conducting our school choirs, Randall Jordan has the honor to see the most students pass to the district compared to other schools.
“It makes me feel really good to know that our hard work paid off and it helped those students to be successful,” Jordan said.
Jordan himself has participated in the All-State choir, and with all his experience and knowledge, he wants to give his students honest advice.
“The more you practice, the less you have to cram the memorization, the less you have less you have to try to cram learning the pieces,” Jordan said. “If you can avoid that self-stress by coming up with a good practice routine, practicing with friends, and going to sectionals will take some of the stress off.”
Even though the All-State process is incredibly valuable and has a lot of merit, it doesn’t measure the quality of a musician you are.
“I think it’s incredibly worthwhile and incredibly beneficial, but not making the All-State choir doesn’t mean that you can’t be a choir director or a professional singer,” Jordan said. “Most choir directors that I know probably didn’t make the All-State choir, and here they are being fantastic choir directors or professional singers.”
