For the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Carnegie Hall Choral Festival, the Weill Music Institute decided to combine their adult choral festival group with some of the finest high school choirs in the country. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for high school singers to rehearse and perform a major piece of choral music with some of the top singers and musicians from around the country. This year, the Concorde Vocal Ensemble of the York County Senior Honors Choir will be one of only two high school choirs in the nation to be invited to participate. Randy Yoder is conductor of the choir.

The choir will spend six days in New York rehearsing for the event, culminating in a performance on Sunday, February 13, in Carnegie Hall of the Requiem of Hector Berlioz with the Leesville Road High School Capital Pride of Raleigh, NC and the adult Carnegie Hall Festival Chorus with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under conductor Robert Spano and Director of Choruses Norman Mackenzie. It is a massive work, a difficult challenge for even adult choirs to undertake. We dropped in on a rehearsal to talk to Norman Mackenzie and to the choir’s regular director, Randy Yoder, about how this young choir is stepping up to the challenge. You can hear our feature below.

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