Nine Green Hope chorus students had the opportunity to perform at the North Carolina High School Honors Chorus from Nov. 9 to 12. The students participated in NC Honors Chorus during November, which is a great achievement for both the school and the students as this is the largest number of singers Green Hope has taken to the Honors Chorus.
The NC High School Honors Chorus is a prestigious ensemble, organised by the North Carolina Music Educators Association (NCMEA) which brings together the most talented high school singers from around the state. The association provides an opportunity for selected students to work with a renowned guest conductor – Dr. Felicia Barber – and perform advanced chorus pieces for a large audience.
First, students audition at school in order to advance to the official NCMEA chorus auditions. From there, they are given the opportunity to showcase their vocal skills such as tone quality, pitch accuracy and sight-reading in front of a judge who then scores the students out of 120.
In each school, 20% of their program may audition, which is 28 people from Green Hope. These chorus students were given a piece of music that they studied and practiced over the summer to perform for Mr. Botwick first. He scored them with the same rubric used by the judges at the festival and selected the students who received a high enough score to officially audition for the Honors Chorus.
During school auditions, Mr. Botwick assessed their vocal techniques including their breathing, their ability to create enough space in their mouth to achieve certain sounds, their understanding of the music and the story they told while singing. He spent endless hours preparing the students for each of the eight songs helping them master their parts.
A few of the singers sat down with the GH Falcon to give more insight into their personal experience preparing for this opportunity and generally being a part of something this big. They began studying a practice piece, individually, during the summer of 2023 and around a month before school auditions, singers like YiHuo (Charlie) Du (‘26) along with Mr. Botwick, hosted mock auditions. “My friends, Lukas and Jackson, hosted a mock audition where you could pretend to be in an actual audition and be graded so you could see the areas you had to improve on,” Du said.
The students were challenged with procrastination, lack of motivation and creativity along with stress. It was difficult for them to continuously study the same piece of music and find the different areas that needed improvement since they wanted everything to be perfect.
In an interview with Cait Belingon (‘25), who has participated in the chorus for two years now, she mentioned how intense her preparations for the auditions were. Belingon explained, “It was a piece called ‘Arise, my beloved’ and I practised it over and over trying to make it as musical as possible, adding phrasing, word stresses and other things I thought would make me stand out.” Some singers were fearful of not making it to the official auditions and others were anxious of reaching the high standards set by previous honors chorus singers.
Another dilemma they discussed was the difficult task of controlling breath and voice especially as they were singing for long hours during rehearsals. It was nerve-wracking, specifically during the few weeks leading up to the performance date.
Despite all the hard and exhausting work put into preparing for the event, the performance was splendid. It was a cacophony of numerous different based voices all merged into one beautiful melody. Du described the experience as moving and said, “Just listening to 200 voices come together and sing as one was moving. It sounded so clean, like nothing I’ve heard before!”
Remy Owens (‘26), another one of the nine students, recalled a few encouraging words from Dr. Felicia Barber highlighting the impact of choral music. Dr Barber said,“The power of choral art is its ability to communicate relevant and transformative information while fostering a diverse musical community.” Dr. Felicia commended the Green Hope students’ remarkable ability to connect beautifully through music reflecting their shared commitment to excellence and diversity in performance.
According to the singers, the NC Honors Chorus concert was unforgettable. “The last 90 seconds of the performance was moving. It was beautiful,” Mr. Botwick told the GH Falcon. Overall, the performance was a celebration of excellence held at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). The choir tackled eight different pieces so melodiously.
As for Green Hope, students can now come to the classroom and share their experiences at the concert to encourage others to grab these types of opportunities because so many are talented enough to participate but not enough trust themselves to sign up for the auditions. Mr. Botwick said he was beyond proud of his students, “Seeing my students perform and seeing the joy on their faces brought me so much satisfaction in knowing that I am changing lives with my profession.”
The students’ chorus teacher shared that he hoped they understood how fortunate they were to be given such an amazing opportunity to work with a college director and meet students from all over North Carolina. This was a once in a lifetime chance for the nine students and Green Hope plans on encouraging future chorus members to audition as well.
