On Sept 21, 15 choir students met at the high school at 6 a.m. to leave for first round auditions for the TMEA All-State Choir at Keller High School. Once each year, choir students across Texas get one opportunity to audition for the State Choir. 

“I do TMEA each year because it challenges me and pushes me to improve as a singer,” choir president and senior London Kasper said. 

The TMEA All-State Choir is a three round audition process for students to become part of one of the four All-State Choirs. Each choir will prepare with directors for three days then perform at the end of the TMEA Clinic/Convention in Feb.  The auditions are blind, meaning that the judges never see the contestants before or after they sing, and they are also never told the singers’ names. Each singer is assigned a number and that is all the judges ever know about them. Each round, several songs are chosen to be the audition pieces and three days before auditions, the cuts are released. The cuts are the sections of the songs that are to be performed for the judges in the audition room. 

“The cuts were easy, but that is what made it difficult to advance to the next round,” sophomore Zoe Cooley said. “You had to make it more than just notes with a steady rhythm. You had to sing with emotion as if you were the composer and you felt the pain and emotion that they felt when they wrote the song.”

After spending nearly 12 hours in the Keller High School cafeteria, playing games, napping or doing anything else to pass the time, the students learned their results. Out of the 15 that auditioned, 12 will be advancing to the next round. Those 12 are freshmen Ariana Schmitt, Victoria Duffey, Elizabth Miller, Kay Willoughby, sophomores Katelyn Attaway, Ellie Conlan, Zoe Cooley, Raegan Huffman, Addi Jarrell, juniors David Lassater, Xavier Little and senior London Kasper. 

“It feels really surreal to advance past the first round as a freshman,” Schmitt said. “It is also awesome to know that hard work really does pay off.”