Choir and orchestra are taking student volunteers from both organizations and will be going to South Padre Island this weekend to participate in a music festival held on April 21. Multiple choirs and orchestras from different regions and areas will be attending and competing.

“They score for each category,” choir director Nathan Ratliff said. “There will be a band award, an orchestra award and a choir award. Then, there’s an overall award for the best group of the whole contest.”

For the first time, the school combined all choir students who volunteered to participate into one choir. They have been working on new music for the past few weeks and have been hosting before school and block lunch rehearsals.

“We have been working on three different songs,” Ratliff said. “We all had to learn new music because each class is singing [different pieces of music] and we had to get everybody onto the same page.”

Similarly, orchestra has combined all participants into one group and has been practicing different pieces. They will be participating in a separate competition from choir.

“We’re playing all beach related music for the trip,” orchestra director Matthew Cautivar said. “[We are doing pieces] including music from The Little Mermaid, Moana and The Beach Boys.”

Besides the aspect of having fun, Cautivar said he considers going with choir as a special opportunity for orchestra.

“We performed with them at their winter concert,” Cautivar said. “We hope this might  lead to future musical collaborations.”

The participants will not know who they are competing against until the day of the competition. With much to anticipate, both directors would like the students to perform well and be confident in what they present.

“It’s about [the students] feeling successful on music [even though they] have not had much time [to work] on [it],” Ratliff said.” [They should] feel proud, that’s the goal. I want them to feel proud about the product they put out there for everybody to hear.”