CHS Senior is All-State Vocalist
For the first time in nearly two decades, Chatham sent a vocalist to the All State Choir. Soprano Brittney Gerber sang with about 100 other students from around the state in the All-State Mixed Choir, Dec. 3 – 6 at the Eastman Theater in Rochester.
The New York State School Music Association held its local competition at Mary E. Dardess Elementary School in Chatham this year. Brittney competed at Level 6, the hardest there is. She sang an Italian aria from “La Boheme,” by Puccini, which she said was very high in her vocal range. Things didn’t go entirely smoothly: Her accompanist used an electric piano, which turned out to be not a piano, but an organ, but Brittney forged ahead just the same. “The judge was really impressed,” she said. She also had to sight-read, something she was never taught to do, and she was nervous about how she did with that. Judging, she said, is on tone quality, pronunciation of words, interpretation and accuracy. She must have done something right, because when she got her score back, it was 100. Then came the nail-biting – two months. In the beginning of September, a letter came in the mail: She had been accepted into All-State, the first one from Chatham since the early 1990s.
Brittney said she’s been singing since she was in the fourth grade, when she was a canary at Mary E. Dardess. Since then, she’s been in choir every year, has been in every musical production the school offered, and has been in every all-county recital since she was in fifth grade. “I sing whenever I can,” she said. She said she’d love to sing opera. She’d also love to teach and to direct a high school play, but, she said, “I don’t want to let the music part of life go away.”
Meanwhile, she said, the concert material for the All-State concert is “crazy difficult,” with works by Haydn, Brahms, Randall Thompson and Moses Hogan among others.
Three CHS Vocalists in 'Melodies of Christmas'
Three students from Chatham High School sang with the Empire State Youth Orchestra in its “Melodies of Christmas” concert Dec. 3 through 6, senior Erin Lanphear, an alto, and sophomores Diana Jones, a soprano, and Geena Eglin, an alto. The choir is composed of about 40 vocalists out of 150 who auditioned from around the state.
FROM LEFT: Erin Lanphear, Geena Eglin and Diana Jones practice "Silent Night."
The concert included 12 traditional Christmas carols, and was performed at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady as a benefit for terminally ill cancer patients at Albany Medical Center’s Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders. It’s unusual for a school to have more than one singer chosen – Chatham can be proud that three of its singers were part of the Melodies of Christmas.