5 Emmaus High Students Head to All-State Chorus Festival

Special to Emmaus Patch By Chrissy Cilento, Emmaus High School Senior. Cilento recently participated in the Regional 5 Chorus Festival along with 21 of her classmates.

Twenty-two students from Emmaus High School recently traveled to Hamburg Area School District for the annual Region 5 Chorus Festival. EHS students from across all voice parts were combined with choral students from about one hundred other high schools to create the Region 5 choir of approximately 210 students. 

Before arriving at the festival, each student is responsible for learning the pieces of music that the guest conductor chooses to perform. Any one of these pieces can be used as a re-audition piece that students must sing for judges, so it's imperative they come prepared. At the re-auditions, students are called into an audition room one-by-one to sing excerpts from two songs without accompaniment. Judges critique the students' re-auditions and rank them based on their performances. The top six scorers from every voice part are then selected to advance to the All-State Chorus festival in Erie, Pa., from April 18-20.

This year after the re-auditions, five Emmaus students qualified for the All-State level. Seniors Sadie Dunn and Laura Erle, Juniors Gabriella Galante and Anthony Sharp and Sophomore Mason Trinkle will all participate in the All-State festival.

Says Dunn upon seeing her name as #1 for her voice part on the All-State list: "I felt like all my hard work was finally paying off. Initially I was just in shock and I was shaking and there was a lot of hugging and crying, but now that I've had time to soak it in, I'm just glad I have the  opportunity to be a part of something I will remember forever."

Chrissy Cilento, a senior at Emmaus High School, plans to study journalism in college. She is a periodic contributor to Patch.