Front Row: Johanna Dykhoff ’16, Rachel Casey ’15, Ellen Bakke ’15, Anna Laughery ’16, Celia Kennedy ’15, Meghan Onserio ’15, Colleen Irwin ’14, Josephine Von Dohlen ’15
This year, the Academy Chorale is the largest it has ever been in Providence Academy history. The choir has grown to around 70 people, and has reached its cap number of students for the class.
But a small group of students out of this large choir participate in a separate choir called Chamber Choir, which practices before school.
Mr. Ricard Carrillo, the Academy Chorale and Chamber Choir conductor says, “Chamber Choir is a group of auditioned students from Academy Chorale who want to do some more challenging music and music of different varieties and genres.”
This year, the Chamber Choir has 16 students, consisting of eight men and eight women, or four per part. This is a change from last year’s Chamber Choir, which was made up of only female singers. Mr. Carillo says that he chose this number because it fits with the historically small Chamber Choir setting.
However, this group of students did not have an easy time getting into the choir. They were chosen from around thirty students who auditioned. Placement was based both off a person’s voice quality or “someone who can do some of the more challenging music,” according to Mr. Carrillo, but also on how the individual voices blend together.
Chamber Choir performs both men and women’s parts, as well as pieces with the group as a whole. They perform at regular Academy Chorale events. The first performance, called the Sacred Concert, took place in November at Holy Family Catholic Church. In addition to their own piece at this concert, “Set me as Seal”, by Rene Clausen, the Chamber Choir sung the middle section of the entire Chorale’s piece “Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt” by Felix Mendelssohn.
They also performed at the Christmas Extravaganza in December, and will perform this spring as well.