Lily Cosgrove selected to join Missouri All-State Choir
Cosgrove will be participating in the All-State Choir as a 2nd Alternate Soprano.
November 9, 2015
Lily Cosgrove sings to “A la Media Noche” with the rest of the class in the choir room. “I really like the size of the ensemble,” Cosgrove said. “It’s a lot smaller than an Acapella choir and we work at a faster pace.” photo by Honour Sollars
Senior Lily Cosgrove was recently accepted into the 2015-2016 Missouri All-State Choir as a 2nd Alternate Soprano. Cosgrove is the only STA student to be selected to participate in this year’s All-State Choir.
Her journey first started with an pre-audition, built to determine the top girls to send to the KC Metropolitan Area District Choir auditions. Each school is allowed to send a certain percentage of their choir programs to these auditions, and to decide who would attend STA pre-auditions involved identifying key signatures, sight reading and a solo audition. Cosgrove’s selection to represent STA in this percentage led her to the District Choir auditions Oct. 3rd at Lee’s Summit High School.
“This entire process is a blind audition,” Cosgrove wrote. “It is solely based on your voice and ability.”
The District Choir audition process required similar aspects to the STA pre-audition. Cosgrove had to identify two key signatures, sight read, sing along with a recording playing every part except hers and solo audition. Once she was selected to join the District Choir, she was now eligible to audition for the All-State Choir.
For the All-State Choir audition, each person was expected to learn the song “Locus Iste” and are scored on a number of aspects including tone quality, musicality, pitch and rhythm accuracy, intonation and dynamics. Only six students and two alternates are selected per voice part. Being an alternate, Cosgrove now rehearses and performs with the choir.
“The rehearsal processes are very rigorous,” Cosgrove wrote, “If you are late, or miss a rehearsal, you are eliminated from the choir.
According to Cosgrove members of the state choir also often make state orchestra or band, and end up leaving. Cosgrove would take their place if this were to occur, or if a member of the choir were eliminated for the previous purpose.