Lander Hosts 30th Annual Choral Festival
By: Joey Plyler
Lander University held its 30th Annual Choral Festival Friday, February 17, during which 11 high school choirs from throughout the state of South Carolina came to participate in clinics and perform for professional choral adjudicators. The festivities began at 10:00 a.m. and lasted until 5:00 p.m., whereupon Lander’s University Singers and Old Main Singers gave an exhibition performance. Following the performance, the ceremonies were concluded with distribution of awards, with Dorman High School’s Chamber Singers receiving first place.
Dr. Chuck Neufeld, Director of Choral Activities at Lander, commented on the success of this year’s festival. “The performances were excellent and the logistics ran as smoothly as ever. Each choir received good feedback in the form of a clinic, written adjudication, recorded comments from judges, and a performance recording. And it did not snow!”, his last comment referring to past festival cancellations due to winter storms.
Neufeld went on to cite the importance of choral festivals like this one. “The choral festival is one step for high school singers in what we hope will be a lifetime of choral singing–a lifetime of creating music with many other people. The choral festival performances were only one of many that we hope students will give throughout the course of their lives”
He concluded with his thoughts on the choral arts, saying, “More important than the results of the choral festival competition is the place of music, particularly choral music, in our lives. Singing in a choir is a unique, wonderful, sometimes magical, sometimes spiritual experience.”
