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“Festival of Voices” set to fill the air with music at Tech with performances tonight

Rehearsals for the second annual “Festival of Voices” begin this morning, and a concert will be held at 7 p.m. tonight in Bryan Fine Arts Building’s Wattenbarger Auditorium.The event, coordinated by assistant professor and choral director Craig Zamer, invites High Schools from across the state to participate in a collaborative performance, while giving each school the opportunity to showcase its individual choir.

“I really had two motives in coordinating the event,” Zamer said. “The first is to provide an opportunity for my student organization, the American Choral Directors Association, to experience teaching from professors other than myself. It gives them a chance to see how other professors rehearse, and it gives them that much more experience with a master teacher.

“The second is more of a recruiting effort. We bring high school students here and we show them the campus. They’re going to eat lunch in the University Center, we’re going to provide dinner in the evening, and we’re giving them a great opportunity to see our department and perform in our auditorium.”

Seven high schools responded to the invitation to participate in the event, including Cookeville, Wilson County Central, Upperman, White County, Farragut, Mt. Juliet, and Franklin County.

The concert is an all-day event for the participants from the visiting high school choirs. Members of the visiting choirs will attend a clinic with Sandra Snow, associate professor of music education and choral conducting at Michigan State University. Each visiting choir will be given the opportunity to perform two pieces for Snow. Snow will then work for approximately 30 minutes with each choir.

The Tech Chorale will perform briefly and then join the visiting choirs to rehearse two new pieces of music to be performed tonight.

The concert will include individual performances from the visiting choirs, and the Tech Chorale will also perform. The visiting choirs, along with the Tech Chorale, will perform the two pieces they learn earlier today as the finale of the concert.

“Each High School will perform their respective pieces, then the Tech chorale will perform.” Zamer said. “At the end of the night, all of the schools, along with the Tech Chorale, will perform the two pieces that they learned. Over 300 voices will be singing in the culmination of this event.”

This event is free and open to the public.