Sound waves crashing against the competition.

 On March 31, the Bullitt East Choir Competed at the KMEA District 5 Vocal Assessment, winning Distinguished.

The choir was prepared and ready to compete. Over the year, they had been practicing and tuning their vocals. Their hard work paid off with this competition. With their vocalizational skills and the hard work of their sound engineers, they were able to accomplish this feat. The pride the choir’s instructor, Carrie Gary, demonstrated was radiant and each of her vocalists knew it.

Throughout the year, they have been practicing endlessly on songs such as, “Tres Cantos Nativos,” and “Inscription of Hope.” These songs were drilled into the vocalists and the need to memorize every syllable is vital if they want to do good. If they are offbeat, it could cost them the competition and all the hard work they had done. “I was really proud of their hard work,” Gary said. The students pushed themselves and spent lots of time in order to do well and show off what they had been practicing for. 

Percussionist Brenden Zygmunt helped make the experience as good as possible. Being one of three percussionists present, his work was instrumental to the show’s success and rating. “It was good, it sounded well,” Zygmunt said about the choir as he worked with them. The judges must have agreed with the sentiment based on their rating of the event and what they heard the choir perform.

Going against groups with twice the amount of members from middle schools and other high schools all across the state they have truly earned their rating and had proved how well they could do. The tone of the event was very much religious. Most songs were old songs with religious tones since choir tunes tend to be in that genre. One of the chosen songs, “Inscription of Hope,” was made from writings on hidden Jews in Cologne, Germany. Not every song they performed was religious and also had a different meaning. For instance, “Tres Cantos Nativos,” is based on a Brazilian tribe and is one of the songs that the choir enjoys performing. The choir enjoys most of the different songs with different meanings and cultural backgrounds that they get to perform and show their talent with. The choir is proud of their rating and hopes to do as well as they did again in the future.