By Chloe Moino
Staff Writer
@_chloechristine

The Coppell High School A Cappella choir was named “Grand Champs” on Tuesday after competing at the Festival di Voce at Dallas Baptist University in the Pilgrim Chapel. Awarded Best in Class, the A Cappella group will perform as the 2016 Honor Choir at this same festival next year.

CHS Senior Ana-Sofia Gonzalez notes how this festival is the most prestigious competition this choir does all year before announcing her shock at the award they won.

“Last year this choir didn’t even place, and this year we are the Grand Champions,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve been doing these pieces for so long and we performed them the best we ever had at that competition, so it was awesome to end my choir career on that note.”

The Madrigals went to a different festival earlier this spring and did not place so well.

“Finally our hard work paid off by winning this competition,” senior Josh Kim said. “This group has been going to this same competition for the past three years, and this is the first time we came in first place. We were against top tier choirs around this area. When they called our names that we won, we all started laughing because it was absolutely unbelievable.”

Choir director Josh Brown gives us some background information about this competition.

“The Festival di Voce is a festival sponsored by the Spring in the Park Music Festival Company,” Brown said. “It was designed to attract some of the best choirs in the DFW area and is modeled after the American Classic Madrigal Festival at Coppell has been a part of for many years.”

Brown states how extremely proud of this group he is.

“They have grown tremendously as individual performers as well as an ensemble. They gave one of the top performances of any choir I have ever had,” Brown said. “They were extremely focused and executed everything we had rehearsed when they got on stage.

As one of the lesser known organization on campus, this award proves the choir is just as high caliber of an organization as any other on CHS grounds. With that, Brown hopes for more support.

“I hope many people from Coppell High School will come and support the choir when they perform next year which will likely be at the end of April,” Brown said. “This a huge accomplishment as many of the choirs we competed with are nationally recognized for excellence. It is a huge honor to be selected from such a prestigious group of performing ensembles.”

CHS Junior Caden Fernando recognizes Brown for pushing this choir as hard as he did.

“Mr. Brown worked us to our full potential,” Fernando said. “He is the reason why this group became so successful.”

Reflecting back on this year, CHS junior Maha Haque states how although they weren’t expecting to win, they definitely deserved to.

“It’s the end of the year and this represents the summation of all of the hard work we have done,” Haque states. “We weren’t expecting this prestigious award to be handed to us since we were the underdogs; we weren’t expecting really any recognition, so we are all so honored to be named the champions.”

What does this indicate for A Cappella’s future?

“This just means we will have to step up our game even more next year,” Haque states. “We have to live up to the expectations that are now set for us.”