Hopkins High School Choirs Win Festival Disney Competition

(The following article was submitted by choir parent volunteer Tina Persson. Do you have an article or letter to the editor you'd like to submit? E-mail james.warden@patch.com.)

 

Concert Choir, under the direction of Philip Brown, spent their spring break taking top honors in the 2012 Festival Disney Competition in Orlando, Florida. Festival Disney is an annual event for middle school and high school vocal, instrumental and auxiliary ensembles with competitive adjudication. Hopkins choirs participated along with 97 ensembles from around the nation, with all of them rated by a panel of judges. The adjudicators for the event were among the top educators in their fields. The choir judges were choir directors from Western Michigan University, Florida State University, and the University of Florida.

 

Awards

Four Hopkins choirs, including the Concert Choir, Chamber Choir, Midori Girls’ and Geoff Men’s Choirs, collectively won seven awards for their performances.

The Concert Choir scored 292 out of 300, putting them in first place overall. They were awarded the Festival’s highest award –the “Gold Mickey” Award-- that is given to the most outstanding ensemble of the festival. Hopkins Chamber Choir followed suit with a “Gold Mickey” Award in the specialty choir category. The Midori Girls’ A Capella group earned a “Silver Mickey” Award in the concert ensemble category. All four choirs received the “Best in Class” awards.

“The entire tour was a great experience for the students,” said Choir Director Philip Brown. “Festival Disney is a first class music festival and competition, providing valuable feedback and performance opportunities for each group that participates. All we focused on during the competition portion of the tour was performing to the best of our musical ability. If that resulted in winning awards (which it did), great! If it had not resulted in any awards, that would have been fine also, as long as we truly did the best we could. The awards ceremony was an exciting night for the Hopkins High School students, myself, and the entire choir program.”

The trophies are on display in the main lobby at Hopkins High School.