On Wednesday April 9th, the Tigard Concert Choir boarded a bus headed to Forest Grove to participate in the annual League Festival, a state qualifying singing competition. Although Tigard arrived at the competition early in the morning, they didn’t perform until after lunch which gave them plenty of time to check out their competition. Eight different choirs in the district participated in the competition, including Tualatin, Glencoe, and McMinnville.

After watching some of the other choirs perform, Tigard made their way to the warm up area where the prepped for their performance. At league festival the choirs have the chance to perform a four to five song set, followed by critiques from a judge and sight singing.

“Remember to smile!” reminded choir director Sue Hale. “We don’t want to look like zombies out there.” The choir took that advice to heart and after performing, one of the judges commented on how happy people in the choir looked, as well as complimenting the choir on their sound.

“We performed really well”, said senior Fotini Dorrance. “We did better than what we’ve been doing during rehearsal and I’m pretty sure we qualified for state!”

And qualify they did. This morning, the scores came out and Tigard was at the top of the list for the second year in a row, placing first at league festival.  That means that Tigard’s concert choir is among the twenty four choirs that will be competing on May tenth at state. Last year, Tigard finished in the top ten and many of the choirs are looking to Tigard to place high again.