By: Ainsley Northrop and Owen Fugit

People and Editorial Editors

On Nov. 16, 15 Los Gatos High School students traveled to Hayward, CA, to participate in the 2023 California Choral Directors Association (CCDA) Coastal Region Honors Choir. CCDA hand-selected each student through extensive auditions, which included performing an Aria, sight-reading, and demonstrating tonal memory. Once the students got in, CCDA placed them in one of three choirs: Treble (SSAA), Mixed (SATB), or Tenor and Bass (TTBB). Students then learned roughly seven songs, depending on their placement. Upon arriving in Hayward, each participant sang in a small group to prove their mastery of the music and make it into the event. 

Choirs rehearsed from Nov. 16-18, and performed on the 18th. Each choir worked in separate rooms with a specialized instructor for most of each day. Reflecting on the SSAA instructor, Lori Marie Rios, senior Logan Campbell said, “She was very unconventional in a way that she had us move around and didn’t focus so much on the specific parts of the music, but instead on how we felt about the music.” Rios pieced together music related to a woman’s journey through time. With songs ranging from Ave Maria to What Happens When a Woman Takes Power?, the SSAA choir left the audience in awe. 

Students bonded within and outside of the LGHS choirs in the few moments off from rehearsal. Junior Aadya Jain described: “It was just in a room singing nonstop…Being around advanced singers was really cool, and I really enjoyed making friends…Eating every meal together definitely brought us closer together. Also, since rehearsals were so long, we spent so much time together.” The night before the performance, the LGHS choir students even bonded while watching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes at a local theater. Honors Choir benefitted all attendees, furthering their musicality and bringing classmates closer together.

In a separate choir-related event, on Dec 13, Saratoga High School (SHS) hosted Los Gatos High School for a first-of-its-kind winter concert. The choirs worked together and sang as a combined ensemble on two songs: “I Love You/What a Wonderful World” and “Sogno Di Volare.” LGHS Choral Program Director Maricel Riley said she picked these songs because “When I pick songs for the choirs I always consider the range of the voices of the ensemble, type and personality of the choir, the meaning of the song which usually goes with the theme of the concert and of course I want a variety of repertoire for the concert.” 

Working with Saratoga was a new experience; last year, the two choirs had a choral exchange at LGHS, but the two groups stayed separated outside of that because “the schedules for both groups never worked in the past.” Parents of students in each choir enjoyed listening to the combined sound. At every LGHS choral concert, the choral program does one song together as a whole group. With the addition of Saratoga choirs, the impact of the combined choir was more powerful than ever. LGHS Choirs will participate in exchanges and clinics across the Bay Area in the coming months, including a clinic at San Jose State.