The Green Hope Chorus program celebrated great success in the music world at the Music Performance Adjudication (MPA) event. The MPA is an opportunity for chorus programs from various schools to attend and receive a rating on their singing and sight reading. The rankings for this festival include: Superior, Excellent, Fair and Developing, Needs Improvement. The Tenor and Bass choir earned the Excellent ranking. Sorelle Sound and the Advanced Treble choir both earned the Superior ranking.

Earning high rankings and learning how to improve motivates the program even more.  These accomplishments for choral students occurred due to relentless work within the classroom. Students would learn how to sight read as well as perform two songs. During each school day since the start of second semester, these students dedicated more and more time to perfecting these pieces. Although the event is not necessarily competition-based, there was still a standard that had to be met. One chorus student, Shreya Ravi, said “In terms of how it’s held I think it gives a good understanding of what they (the chorus program) need to improve on and how they are doing as an ensemble.”

The event provided an opportunity for growth amongst the students. Not only were they able to improve their singing skills, but they finally heard from an audience perspective the true sound of a choir.. Shreya, sharing her experience, said, “I feel like I wasn’t scared at first but as it came closer to our time to sing I was like ‘Oh, this is kind of scary’ but after it was really fun.” This experience was not just something to be graded on, but a chance for them to connect as a choir.

Chorus teacher, Alan Botwick, said “It brings the program together because they get to support each other at MPA throughout the day and cheer each other on and get to know each other a little more outside of just their classes.” The goals for this program  do not restrict themselves to only producing impeccable performances.  The experiences broadens their horizons in order to build a sense of community.  Botwick continued on saying, “Scores aside, the thing that I look for at MPA is just from when we started and when we perform did we grow by x amount and I think they did that.”

These teachers and students can look back at this event and appreciate the time and effort they put in to receive the scores they did. This chorus event goes on to show the greatness of the program and the excellence of the teachers and students.