Choir Festival Gives Young Singers Chance at Spotlight

Nearly 1,000 singers will take the stage at Segerstrom Hall on Saturday as part of the Pacific Chorale’s Second Annual Choral Festival.

Beginning at noon, 15 high school choirs will sing in 10-minute segments.

The Orange County Youth Chorale, a 40-member, all-county chorus directed by Bruce Bales and sponsored by the county Department of Education, will sing at 4 p.m.

Five college choirs, participating for the first time, will kick off the evening program at 7:30 p.m.

And the 140-member Pacific Chorale, conducted by music director John Alexander, will sing at the 4 p.m. concert and the evening concert, when it will be joined by nearly 100 high school students in Vincent Persichetti’s “Te Deum.”

“Everybody is excited,” said Alice Gray, whose choir from El Modena High School in Orange will be participating for the first time. “Some of my students are vocalists in bands and have set a lot of their own personal obligations aside to do this.”

Richard Messenger, Pacific Chorale’s assistant conductor and coordinator of the festival, is particularly looking forward to the joint performance of “Te Deum.”

“For me, that’s the most exciting part of the whole affair this year,” Messenger said. “To have those high school singers sitting next to an adult singer and . . . seeing a rehearsal in process and being a part of that experience.

“I hope it will plant the idea in all of their minds that singing is something they can continue to do for many years after they graduate from high school.”

Pacific Chorale director Alexander said his organization is “absolutely committed” to the festival: 60% of the $20,000 budget for the day is coming out of the chorale’s pocket. The remaining 40% will be come from corporate and individual grants.

Alexander described himself as an educator “continually frustrated by the differences within different music school systems. The differences become astonishingly clear in this festival procedure. There are some districts where students are well-trained . . . and other districts where music has been done away with.”

Alexander, who also teaches at Cal State Northridge, said he sees the same problem on the college level too. “I have been gravely concerned for years. . . . My hope in saying this is to wake up administrators and make them realize that other districts have music classes.

“The choirs need an audience. We went through a period building educational buildings in California when we did away with the auditoriums. They were considered extraneous expense and not necessary.

“So there’s a whole generation of students that have never performed in a legitimate auditorium. They need an opportunity to perform in a real hall. This will have meaning for them and will be something they want to continue . . . the rest of their lives.

“Some of these singers in eight or nine years will be members of the Pacific Chorale, and others will be the audience for the chorale, the Pacific Symphony and Opera Pacific, and so forth.”

Other choral directors also see future benefits for the students. “A lot of singers I have aren’t continuing on with music,” said choral director Sharon Herzog at Foothill High School in Santa Ana, a returning participant. “For a lot of them, this may be the last major experience they have with music. So I hope this stimulates them to want to continue on.”

Benefits can flow in two directions, said Fountain Valley High School choral director Ted Reid.

“It’s also good for me to hear a lot of different choirs,” he said. “I learn a great deal. I hear things I wish I heard in my own choir. . . . I also get a lot of new repertory hearing what other choirs perform. And it’s also fun to perform in that room.”

The Pacific Chorale’s Second Annual Choral Festival takes place Saturday in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, starting at noon. Tickets for the daytime events are $2.50; tickets for the evening concert (7:30 p.m.) are $5.50. An all-inclusive ticket costs $7. For more information, call (714) 556-2787 or (714) 542-1790.