Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High School is hosting this year’s District Choir festival.

District Choir is an ensemble created from the 26 schools in District 4: Bald Eagle, Bellefonte, Belleville-Mennonite, Bucktail, Central Mountain, Clearfield, Curwensville, East Juniata, Forbes Road, Glendale, Harmony, Huntingdon, Juniata, Juniata-Mennonite, Juniata Valley, McConnellsburg, Mifflin County, Moshannon Valley, Mount Union, Penns Valley, Philipsburg-Osceola, Southern Fulton, Southern Huntingdon, State College, Sugar Valley, and West Branch. At this year’s District Choir festival, there will be approximately 186 kids, 26 directors, and one guest director, Dr. Beeken.

After completing an audition for their home directors, students are selected to participate in the festival. These students receive the song folder and have about three months to prepare the music for the festival.

When they arrive at the festival, the students begin a warmup with the guest conductor. After the warmups, the student will begin the audition process. Each section, Soprano 1 for example, will go into one classroom. This is the holding room, which is where students wait until it is their turn to audition. In this room, they are told the selected sections from two or three pieces in the folder to audition with. The students have ten minutes to practice the audition spots in the holding room before auditions begin. After the ten minutes, the students are taken into the hallway, usually in groups of five, before they go into the next classroom that is their audition room. The students from each section receiving the top ten scores will advance to regions.

Mr. Rothrock, Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High School’s choir director, adds, “I am incredibly excited to hear and watch Dr. Beeken work with his selections to make a fantastic sounding choir. This year we hired composer Elaine Haganberg to write a piece specifically for our festival.  This is called commissioning a work.  The District 4 Choir will be the first group in the world to perform this piece.”

This year’s District Choir concert will be February 9 at 11:00 a.m. at the Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High School.

This year’s District Choir Members from Clearfield:

Katelynn Smith

Riley Dillion

Elise DuFour

Katlyne Fye

Shelby Flanagan

Emmalee Marshall

Haeley Stott

Devan DeSantis

Ryan Lazauskas

Remington Shugarts

Matthew Bush

Cruz Wright

Mason Yocum