The Regional Choir recently announced the students selected for the 2025 Pre-Area choir competition. These students include sophomore Shalee Perkins, Levi Strother, and Scarlett Hogge. They have completed a challenging audition process and are now preparing for upcoming performances with focus and dedication. The Pre-Area performance will be held at West Brook High School on Tuesday, Oct 21.
“This year, we have three students that ranked in the top 20 to make them eligible to move on to the Pre-Area round of competition,” choir director Stephanie Teague said. “To compete at Pre-Area, these students need to learn three completely new songs and go through the same judging process that they did for Region. But for this round, they also add a Sight-Singing component to the audition. They are given 30 seconds to look at a short exercise and then have to sing the exercise with no prior practice. Both the prepared pieces and the sight-singing are scored and the top six scorers advance to Area.”
Preparation for the auditions involved daily practice routines emphasizing vocal exercises, sight-reading, and perfecting solo pieces.
“I gave my three advancing students the three new songs the first class day after Region Auditions and they have access to practice tracks to help them learn the music,” Teague said. “I also give them sight-reading examples from previous years to give them an idea of what their sight-signing might look like at Pre-Area. But we also sight-read daily in class so they get reinforcement even though it’s as a group instead of individually.”
Balancing choir rehearsals with schoolwork and other activities requires careful time management.
“It’s definitely very overwhelming, especially balancing honors, concerts, and auditions,” Perkins said. “But I always find time to finish my homework, study, practice, and, of course, find time for my family and friends.”
According to Teague, she hopes participating in the Pre-Area choir will have a lasting impact on the students.
“Since Pre-Area is just an audition and not for performance, I am positive the skills they are using and honing through this process will help them be more confident in class and will help them be leaders to the younger students which in turn will make the choirs advance at a faster pace and will allow them to learn more complex music because they have strong leadership that will help them learn along the way,” Teague said.
There are many goals for student for the choir students for this year and for future years.
“My goals this year and in future years would be to improve our sightreading scores at the UIL competition in March, to have more than half of my students qualify for State Solo & Ensemble, and to recruit even more singers for next year,” Teague said.
For the students, all of their hard work is coming together along with new goals and inspirations for the future.
“I would really like to make Pre-Area this year since I was so close last year, but I’m just excited to meet new people who have similar interests as me and do what I love,” Perkins said.
