The OCSA Vocal and Band departments had auditions for All-State this past weekend. Both of them performed extremely well, the Vocal department was even able to get all of their High School members that auditioned into the next step in the process.

For Vocal majors, there are two parts to the auditions. They must first be tested on musical terminology, followed by a sight-reading task. After this, their scores are tallied by the judges who then decide which students move on to the next round. Lemuel Rexach, a senior at OCSA, spent months preparing for his audition. He’d been wanting to get into reading choir but was told that he would need back surgery and therefore would miss the second part of the All-State auditions.

Normally in order to get into the All-state choirs, you must go to both sections of the audition, but there is another option. In order to get into the reading choir, the applicant must sight-read 30/40 measures correct during this first section. Lemuel got an almost perfect score with 39/40 measures correct. This means he is automatically in Reading Choir and has no need to go to the second audition, while the other vocalists are currently preparing for theirs.

For the Band department, All-State auditions are different. They must prepare four major and minor scales as well as the 6 études for this year’s auditions. Once there will have about a 5-6 minute audition while the judges score them. Once all scores have been tallied, the results are displayed and callbacks announced. If you receive a callback they will ask you to perform the parts of the études you didn’t perform earlier and most if not all of your minor and major scales. After those auditions the results are announced as soon as they are ready. Right now our band department is waiting on their results and we wish them all the best of luck.