Oh. My. Heavens.

Today was the Gem State Large Ensemble Festival (or GSLEF as it's affectionately called... just kidding) in Pocatello. We got to perform three of our songs and we did our German one (Still Wie Die Nacht) and Lullaby and There Will Be Rest. Well, I was hoping that we would do well, so it wasn't just like we gave up after tour or whatever, but I didn't want to be disappointed so I kept my expectations kind of low. We heard a lot of really great choirs too, so that made me a little nervous. We warmed up and Mr. Dresen told us the basic stuff, to be expressive but not let go of the technical aspects, etc. Then, we performed. I thought we did fairly well. The clinician/adjudicator lady thought otherwise, however.

She was speechless. She told us that she had taught high school choir years ago, so she knew what she was talking about. She said that she had never heard a high school choir make music like we did. Apparently she had also heard Bonnevaires in the years past, and she told us that we were the best out of all of them. We were put ahead fifteen minutes because she was supposed to work with us for those fifteen, but she had nothing to work on.

So, we went to the sight reading testing room thingy. We had two minutes to study a piece of music individually, then five minutes to practice within our section. We had to sol fege the music (it was one of Bach's choral pieces that he actually wrote for his choirs) and this sight reading lady said we did it perfectly. She also had nothing to work with us on, so instead she had Mr. Dresen conduct it like he would one of our own songs, and then we sang There Will Be Rest for her. She asked us to sing at her funeral if she died before graduation, which was kind of morbidly funny, and also quite the compliment, seeing as she is a music professor of some sort.

Overall, we got 40/40 points from one adjudicator, 39.5/40 from the other, and 18/18 points on our sight singing. Better than I expected. :D