Today, Wednesday April 16, 2014, three out of the four West Ridge choirs preformed at UIL. In UIL, University Interscholastic League, every choir in the region has to perform three pre-rehearsed songs from a specific list of songs all rated 1-5 (1 is easiest and 5 is hardest) and do sight reading. In sight reading, you get piece of music that you’ve never seen before and perform it in front of the judges. Thankfully, you do not have to say the words; our choirs just sing Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, and so on. Let’s just say that’s the most boring part of UIL.
Anyway, Concert and Honor Treble Choir (the choir I was in) performed three songs like everyone else. We are supposed to perform level 1 and level 2 songs only, but we performed two level 3 songs and (Ms. Snouffer says) one level 3,000 song. I’ll give you a quick run-down of all the songs:
- The first song we performed was Cantate Hodie, which means “Sing Today” in, I believe, Latin. The song continually flips between Latin and English. It’s fun, up beat, and exciting. I really like it (It’s my favorite).
- The next song we sing is a Russian Folk Song called Kalinka (kal-yeen-ka). It’s all in Russian AND it’s occapella, so it had no musical accompaniment. It’s the level 3,000 song. It’s super hard. We almost ditched it multiple times, but we didn’t. We stuck with it and we sounded FANTASTIC! It changes speed and volume about 20 million times, so it’s hard to remember when to do what. In this song, a man is leaning up against a kalinka bush and is singing about a girl. Whenever I sing it, I picture a big berry bush. It’s kinda creepy.
- The last song we sang was a slower song called I Know Where I’m Going. This song’s about a rich girl who is in love with a poor boy, and she isn’t allowed to marry him. She’s willing to give up everything she has to stay with the boy (Johnny). Throughout the song, she’s singing about that. It’s really a beautiful song, even if it’s hard. The first few lines are as follows:
“I know where I’m going, but who knows who’s going with me.
I know who I love, but who knows who I’ll marry?”
After we sang these songs, we were brought out to the sight-reading room. We got a song and we sang it fabulously. I don’t want to talk too much about that, it’s very boring. Anyway, we got judged one a scale of 1-5 (1 being the best and 5 being the worst). The judges were really nice everywhere. After we were done, we were ushered outside to take a picture. I was thinking it was going to take a while to get our results (1 or 2 weeks, maybe). But not after a long time of being outside, Ms. Snouffer comes out with a trophy. She tells us we got the same score from every single judge (there were 6 total). She told us we got…
Oh, we were all so happy! It was fantastic! Best thing EVER! I’m still really happy about it! I don’t think it could get any better than this. YAY!
Now, I just have to figure out what scores were for Concert Tenor Bass (Boys), Varsity Tenor Bass, and Varsity Treble (girls). Hopefully West Ridge Middle School won the sweepstakes trophy again! Go WRMS!
O my god. I know it’s very hard but our choir is going to get all ones and we did. We did very good as you know now. I love singing and I loved getting straight ones. We got 6 straight ones.
I like this blog post because you go into depth about the songs and what we had to do during them. I also liked this because I know what you are talking about, because I was there. All of your blog posts are great, keep it up!
It’s funny that you thought the sight-reading part would be boring, when it is what fascinated me most at the UIL concert on Monday! I am in awe of how you take a piece of music you’ve never seen and then just chant/talk it out, and then sing it perfectly. I’m so proud of all your choir accomplished and the hard work you’ve put into your performance. Great job, Wildcats!