Prestigious privilege for music department

The choral department has been receiving a lot of attention this past year with high honors such as Touch of Class, being named “America’s Number one Show Choir” by Parade Magazine, a commercial spot promoting a local comic, a House of Representatives delegate coming in to speak to them about their accomplishments as well as a feature on local Fox news among other ventures.

Yet the most prestigious honor awarded to the choir this year is the chance to perform in Opera House in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The combined mass choir will perform on Tuesday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. The mass choir consists of the intermediate and advanced show choirs, Magic Touch and Touch of Class respectively, as well as the advanced standing choir, Chamber Chorale. The mass choir is a formal standing choir that meets after school only once a month to prepare concert pieces for concert performances and competition. Because of the recent Kennedy Center performance, however, the meetings have been extended to every Tuesday after school until the show.

The choir will perform for Vital Voices, a nongovernmental organization founded by current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The group invests monetary support in and brings visibility to extraordinary women around the world.

Hillary Clinton and other politicians and celebrities will be in attendance. The event is invitation only.

“It’s not something that people can just get tickets for and come to. Because there will be a lot of dignitaries there, it will also probably be a very high security kind of event.” said Glenn Cockrell, head of the Choral Department.

The choir will be singing ‘Walk On,’ a song written by the band U2 and arranged especially for the purpose of this event. The woman the song was written for, Burman activist, pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, will attend the event as one of the many prestigious honorees.

After listening to the mass choir’s performance at the Holiday Spectacular concert in December, the Kennedy Center representatives decided that the mass choir would be ideal performers in terms of vocal quality and size.

“When you are a teacher and a director, you hope sometime in your career that you’re going to get an opportunity for your students to go do something like this, to perform in a place like the Kennedy Center. When those chances come around we need to grab them up as much as possible,” Cockrell said. “As those opportunities come we are very grateful for the chance to have a way for [students] to experience something different.”

In the past, Chantilly’s choirs have participated in several concerts at the Kennedy Center in collaboration with other schools, but this year it is just Chantilly on stage.

Cockrell and Sarah Pramstaller, the other choir director in the choral department, informed the mass choir that they would be performing at the Kennedy Center when the group met for its January meeting. Students did not know that they were being auditioned during their Holiday Spectacular rehearsals and performances, so the news came as a surprise.

“Apparently there were two people from the Kennedy Center who came to hear us when we were practicing [for Holiday Spectacular]. Mr. Cockrell didn’t tell us [they were there] so we wouldn’t freak out. They just sat in to hear how we sounded.” senior Jessica Brown said. “Not a lot of high school choirs get to perform at the Kennedy Center, so it’s a pretty big deal.”

Something that is not as widely known as the choir’s participation in this ceremony is the orchestra’s involvement in the performance. The orchestra will be performing alongside the choir. The Kennedy Center representatives were impressed by their performance in the Holiday Spectacular performance and asked the orchestra to perform in addition.

“That wasn’t planned at all. We’re really proud,” junior Alex Woods said. “We’ve had a lot of pressure to be the best that we can be. I’m really excited; not many people can say that they played the Kennedy Center.”

The orchestra has had a busy year as well, auditioning and receiving the honor to perform at the Virginia Music Educators Association (VMEA) conference as one of two groups chosen in the state to do so. Many do not know about this achievement, however, just as many are unaware of the orchestra’s performance with the choir.

“The problem is our orchestra doesn’t get as much recognition even though they have also received their own acknowledgements and awards. I guess people just don’t make as much of a big deal out of it because maybe they don’t do songs modern enough like the choir does. Classical music isn’t quite as loved as it used to be.” senior Alyssa Emmert said. “We have some incredibly gifted people in orchestra. The problem is that it’s not as showy so people don’t always go to their competitions or their performances as much. I believe that the orchestra is equally as talented in the musical arts as any other performance [group] that we have at this school.”

Regardless, both choir and orchestra have earned this prominent honor and will work in tandem to translate it into a professional concert for the esteemed guests.

“I’m very proud all the time. I work in a great place. I have an exceptional program and exceptional kids, so I think it’s really good,” said Cockrell. “If the kids weren’t excited and devoted to the program then we probably wouldn’t get these kinds of opportunities. The enthusiasm brings a level of ability and talent and expertise and as those things grow, more opportunities come.”

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