‘We hope to provide a wonderful choral experience for students.’

Los Angeles Master Chorale Music Director John Currie--his sleeves rolled up and an infectious grin on his face--was spreading his enthusiasm about choral singing.

“There is nothing on the planet like the sound of voices singing together,” he told Banning High School student singers on a visit to the Wilmington campus last week.

With a smattering of musical jokes as leavening, Currie coached the students on breathing and vocalization.

“Sing like fish, not like frogs, drop the jaw . . . sing a big sound,” he told the students as he worked with them to polish the music they’ll perform under Currie’s direction as part of an unusual 400-voice South Bay choral festival on April 3.

Music of Vivaldi, Bruckner, Vaughan Williams and Copland will be sung at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts by students from 12 intermediate and high schools in the South Bay and South Los Angeles. The singers, who will perform with piano and trumpet accompaniment, will fill most most of the Rolling Hills Estates theater’s 450 seats. A smattering of invited guests, including school music teachers, will make up a small audience.

“We hope to provide a wonderful choral experience for students,” said Phyllis Rothrock, chairman of the the chorale’s South Bay support group. She said such a high school music showcase under Currie’s direction is “an idea whose time has come.”

Rothrock’s group came up with the idea and got an enthusiastic response from Los Angeles, Torrance, Centinela Valley and Palos Verdes Peninsula school districts. The chorale, which performs at the the Los Angeles Music Center, hopes it will become an annual event.

Currie, who visited all of the schools to rehearse singers, calls the festival a way for student singers to emulate the 130 professional singers in the chorale. Later, the youngsters will have a chance to hear the group for themselves because they’re getting free tickets for an April concert.

Banning music teacher Laura Young calls the festival “a once in a lifetime shot” for her students, adding, “Having John Currie here gives me the right to tell them to try harder.”

Student Susan Pickett said the opportunity to sing at the festival “is one of the most exciting things” that’s happened to her.