Malow, Ike choirs earn top ratings at regional festival

It was a clean sweep for the Malow Junior High and Eisenhower High School choirs at the District Choral Festival.

All four groups came home with First Division rating and have qualified for the State Choral Festival, which is scheduled for April 25 and 26 at Rochester High School.

“I am so proud of all of our students and how they represented our schools this week,” said choir teacher Julia Holt.

The 85 member Malow Choir performed a choral standard "For the Beauty of the Earth" as well as a song in Spanish called "Cantar" which means sing! The performance judges called their vocal tone exemplary for junior high students and loved the energy that they brought on their second song. Malow Choir's final score was 111/120 points – a strong rating as the cutoff for First Division ratings and State qualification is 96.

Eagle Voices performed "Sanctus" entirely in Latin, and "Come in From the Firefly Darkness.” The judges were impressed with their professionalism and storytelling as well as the use of dynamics in their performance. Eagle Voices came away with a score of 103 points, which is still solidly in that First Division range.

Women’s Chorus wowed the judges with the fierceness of "Hexenlied" or "Witches' Song" a German piece written by Felix Mendelssohn, and the playfulness of "TaReKiTa" a song based on Indian Raga style. The judges loved the variety of the repertoire and praised their "luscious" tone quality. Women's Chorus received a perfect score on high school intermediate sightreading and ended up with 119 points for their final score.

Show Choir performed a song based on text from Shakespeare "It Was a Lover and His Lass" as well as a new arrangement of the traditional Korean piece, "Arirang." The group received a standing ovation for their performance and the judges agreed with the audience, giving them a perfect score of 120 points. Out of the 96 choirs that performed this week, only 4 choirs received perfect scores.