Juniors Claire Horn and Mitchell Hernandez will perform at the Texas Music Educator’s Association Convention in San Antonio Feb. 13 following a successful audition at the state-level.

From the 20 students who try out at the Area auditions, the top two are chosen to join their sections in the mixed All-State Choir. Boys placing in third through sixth places earn chairs in the All-State Men’s Choir while girls placing third through seventh make the All-State Women’s Choir. Both Horn and Hernandez placed third chair in their sections, with Horn singing alto two and Hernandez singing tenor two. Hernandez said it was a different experience auditioning as a tenor two compared to his freshman and sophomore year when he was a tenor one.

“My voice changed my sophomore year just a little bit and fluctuated,” Hernandez said. “Now I’m more of a tenor two than of a tenor one. The main difference came when there’d be a split in the music between the tenor ones and the tenor twos, and I’d get to take the lower part instead of the higher one. That took some tension off my voice, so this year worked out a lot better for me than it would have if I was a tenor one.”

In addition to singing a different voice part, Hernandez is also performing with a different choir than in previous years.

“I made the Mixed Choir my freshman year, and now to make men’s will give me something different I haven’t done before,” Hernandez said. “Overall, the goal is to make the choir, and making men’s choir is something I’m really excited about. I think it’ll be really cool to be in the best men’s choir in Texas for high schoolers.”

Horn said the All-State audition is much more intimidating than the earlier auditions due to the talent of those competing at this level.

“The people at these auditions are the best of the best,” Horn said. “Usually at earlier auditions, it’s easier to separate yourselves from them because you can have musicality in your work. At this audition, everybody is like that. You have to rely on yourself as a singer and your talent and hard work to pull you through instead of just trying.”

At auditions, students sing a cut from each of three pieces varying stylistically, usually a fast piece, a slow piece and a foreign language piece.

“I enjoy seeing all the different styles of music,” Horn said. “It’s so much fun to see the different time periods and the different composers between the music. Instead of just being in choir and hearing Mr. Farren tell you about the music, you can do your own kind of analysis of the songs.”

Preceding auditioning for the judges, contestants wait in groups of five in a holding room where they are allowed to vocalize.

“It’s kind of intimidating when you sing the cuts at the beginning because you’re in there with your whole section,” Horn said. “You kind of see everyone’s personality because they play mind games and try to prove they’re better than you in that room. You see in what ways they set themselves apart, so it’s a little bit of an advantage because you can bring out your strong suits, which can sometimes completely oppose someone else’s.”

 Through the process, Horn said she has learned a lot about herself as a musician, finding different ways to prepare herself and ways to research music.

“What really comes into play for the judges is knowing the time period,” Horn said. “Some people want to sing all these fast melismas in Forte legato and connected, and that’s not the time period. If you go in there with knowledge of the time period, it’s impressive.”

Horn said through the All-State process she has learned work ethic is more important than talent.

“People can tell you have talent all day long, but it’s very rare for someone to tell you that you have incredible work ethic,” Horn said. “I think work ethic is the goal within choir, so it’s important to encourage that and know it is the goal to strive for because not a lot of choirs have that.”