Spending Memorial Day weekend in New York City will be a working holiday for three Traverse City West Senior High School choral singers.
Senior Ashley Nink and juniors Cat Hall and Erik Wilson qualified last month to participate in the 4th Annual Classical Singer High School Competition. The three were among six singers selected at a regional event in Ann Arbor to advance to the national competition.
Classical Singers magazine sponsors the competition, which has quickly gained a prestigious reputation among young classical singers.
"They did very, very well,” said Russ Larimer, choral director at West High School, of his students.
In New York City, the West students will be among hundreds of talented high school choral students vying for scholarships and prize money.
With graduation looming, third place regional winner Nink said the exposure at the competition is priceless. Even if you do not win, representatives from about 70 colleges and conservatories check out the singers and take note of the voices they like.
"A lot of schools give out full scholarships based on the winners,” added Nink, who also qualified to attend the national competition last year in San Francisco.
Nink plans to pursue a career in opera and is applying to conservatories including Overland, Boston and Cleveland. Right after the January 20 event in Ann Arbor, she kicked off her college audition season. Feedback from the Classical Singing Competition judges helped her polish her songs for recruiters.
"It was really a nice start off for me because the following day I got to start my auditions,” said Nink, who began singing in the fourth grade with the Northwestern Michigan Children's Choir.
Hall left the stage in Ann Arbor soaring on a wave of confidence after she felt she had nailed her pieces.
"It was so much fun, I learned a lot and it was probably the best performance I had on stage,” said Hall, also a veteran of the Northwestern Michigan Children's Choir.
Like Nink, Hall is focusing on classical singing for a career. She is philosophical about winning the Classical Singing Competition this year, giving herself a slim-to-none chance of doing so. Nevertheless, she is eager to go to the event in New York City where she can attend master classes and be with other extraordinary singers.
"You'll be exposed in front of people from colleges nationwide,” she said. "And we're going to New York City, I've never been there.”
Eclectic to the core, singing to Wilson represents a broader world than just the classical genre. A composer of what he terms modern music, Wilson also plays the guitar and piano.
While the competition may not be a requisite stepping stone for his future, he enjoyed the regionals and is looking forward to New York.
"I thought it was really fun,” he said. "It was also nerve wracking because they were intimidating.”
Like Nink and Hall, Wilson plans on a career in music but the shape it takes is still unknown.
"I'm not sure about classical but I'll have to see where it takes me,” he said, adding that he's interested in "a little bit of everything.”
All three student take private lessons from Jayne Sleder and praised her influence on both their vocal development and presentation. She helped select pieces to present and coached them in detail about their singing and expressions. She also traveled with them to Ann Arbor January 20 to hear them perform.
"She helped warm us up and told us what we were doing wrong so we could fix it,” said Hall.