As students trickle into the waiting room, Coppell High School senior Esha Ellendula skims over her music one last time. She, along with 30 other choir students from CHS, prepared three songs to audition in hopes of advancing to the next round in the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) All State Process.

On Saturday, the regional audition occurred at Colleyville Heritage High School. In this round, three of the four audition pieces are in German – something that has never occurred in the all-state process before. With these pieces – “Schicksalslied”, “Ich lass dich nicht du segnest mich denn”, “Gott ist Mein Hirt” and “O Sacrum Convivium” – musicality as well as diction is key to advancing to the next round.

Another new aspect of the region audition is the sight-reading portion of the audition. In the regional round, the singers have to read eight measures of music that they have never seen before. They have 30 seconds to go over the music and have one try to sing all of the pitches correctly with proper dynamics and phrasing. Sight-reading can have a great impact on the students’ score as each note has a two point value, one for pitch and one for rhythm. These points can increase chair numbers by more than one chair in either direction.

All the students who auditioned in the region audition were separated into two rooms per voice part and sang snippets of the three songs to a group of judges behind a curtain. The all-state auditioning process is blind and many students feel comfortable due to that factor.

“Every time I get behind the curtain, I do a dance and hype myself up. You have to get your nerves out somehow,” Ellendula said. “With the curtain, you can use whatever hand motions you want to help make sure you stay on pitch and you can conduct yourself. However, when it is with people, you are performing, not really focusing on the techniques.”

CHS took 30 students to the region audition and of those 30, 17 students are advancing to the next round, Pre-Area. 12 were placed into Treble Choir and 9/10 Honor Choir.

The entire all state process started with the first round, district, which occurred on Sept. 22, when students auditioned at L.D. Bell High School. The students auditioned two pieces for each voice part and one combined piece. The sopranos and altos sang  “Flight Song” by Arnesen and “Ride on King Jesus” by Hogan, the bases and tenors sang “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” by Gibbs and “Ave Maria” by Himes and the combined piece was “I Will Lift Mine Eyes” by Runestad.