Saratoga students attend national choir conference

Six students attended a national choir festival called American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) in Chicago from March 9-12.

Students from all over the country were hand-picked to sing in the choir based on audition tapes sent to the association last fall. Two students were chosen for the national choir, and four other students were invited from Crystal Choir, a Bay Area children’s choir, for a special performance.

Sophomore Stephanie Payne and freshman Nina Jayashankar are two talented students lucky enough to have participated in ACDA.

Payne participated in the Women’s National Honor Choir, which is for females age 15 to 22, after finding out she was selected in October. Payne is one of the 300 applicants who were admitted out of a total of 1,200. Receiving the choir music through mail in December, Payne began to work on it with her voice teacher.

“I burned out my weekends with three hour sessions to get all the right notes and memorize the
words of all the songs since most of the music was in other languages,” said Payne.

This weekend was dedicated to a national conference of music where participants from four ACDA choirs (Women’s, Men, Junior High, Children) and additional performers met in Chicago to put on a series of concerts. Participants also got the opportunity to see Chanticleer and choirs from Taiwan and Scandinavia perform.

“It was thrilling to meet people from all over the country who shared a joy in music,” said Payne. “The girl on the right of me was from Tennessee, the girl on the left of me was from Maryland, the girl in front of me was from Ohio, and the girl behind me was from Kansas. It was crazy how versatile everyone was, and how we all came from different places.”

Payne sings alto, being one out of the two alto singers selected from California. Since starting voice lessons in 6th grade, Payne has been a part of all-state and regional honor choir ever since she started high school.

In addition to the hand-picked students participating in ACDA, a Bay Area choir and the Crystal Children’s Choir were invited to sing for the directors. Saratoga students senior Michelle Wang, juniors Rebecca Chen, Olivia Chock, and Denise Lin also attended.

This is sixth year in a row performing at ACDA. This year, these choristers had the honor of performing an interest session for directors interested in learning about Chinese style choral music.

“We perform really different songs than most choirs,” Wang said. “To embrace our Chinese culture, we sing Chinese folk songs and tunes and try to spread it so other directors can teach their own American choirs the same style.”