Aristocracy Wins Gold in San Francisco

Aristocracy Wins Gold in San Francisco

From a brand new coach to microphones cutting off in the middle of performances, West High Aristocracy has had its fair share of adversity. This all led up to the Heritage Festival they competed in last weekend. They traveled to San Francisco to compete with 30 teams from around the country, looking to prove themselves, and ended up earning second place and the overall Gold Award.

  The judges were the Professor of Ensembles and Associate Director of Choral Activities at Baylor University, Lynne Gackle, the former Director of Choral Activities at West Virginia University, Jeffery Redding, and the Professor of Music Education at Brigham Young University, Andrew H. Dabczynski.

  While they have performed in a variety of competitions and performances ranging from the West High’s Pavilion to Carnegie Hall in New York, the members say this competition was particularly nerve-racking because of the professional judges. Amanda Guan (11) said, “It was pretty frightening walking up on stage and performing for [them because they] really know what they’re doing.”

  They also had fun outside of the competition, getting to experience the city. Aristocracy bonded as a family when they went to the Great American Amusement Park along with the other teams that competed. David Kang (10) said, “As a group we are a very tight knit family, but through this trip we got even closer, usually we spend around 10 hours a week 

with each other, but we started spending this amount of time together in one day.” They were also able to visit the famous Fisherman’s Wharf the day before the competition. This helped to calm some people’s nerves and as Guan stated, “Eat too much ice cream.”

  Mr. Rodich, the first year director was very proud of the team. He stated, “They really performed how I needed them to, we had worked throughout the week leading up to the competition on all our harmonies and it really showed through in the performance.”

  Aristocracy has been able to do so much through the time they have been as a group. They have been able to carry the legacy of West High’s competitive Aristocracy through their winning streak.