GREENSBORO — A high school chorale in Greensboro is headed to Rome this summer for a once-in-a-lifetime experience: singing at the Festival Corale Internazionale Di Roma, an invitation-only event and one of the premiere musical events held in Rome each year.
Chorale students from the Weaver Academy for Performing and Visual Arts and Advanced Technology, a magnet school in Greensboro, will perform during a Solemn Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and in a full concert at the Basilica di Sante Maria sopra Minerva.
For these students, the upcoming performances in Rome follow a series of other notable performances over the past year that include singing in the National Youth Choir at Carnegie Hall in New York City and performing as the feature solo choir to open the Spring 2015 National Youth Choir performance at Carnegie Hall.
Pictured: Olivia Moore, Trevor Neal and Tyler Wall performed solo vocals during the Weaver Chorale's fall concert featuring Franz Schubert's "Mass in G" (Mass No. 2 in G major, D 167). The choir from the Greensboro magnet school will perform in Rome this summer. (Annette Tenny, Catholic News Herald)Chorale director Donna Brotherton said the Carnegie Hall performances may have caught the eye of the Rome festival organizers, who sent her an invitation via email "out of the blue."
"Someone in the chorale conducting world had heard us, perhaps at a competition or at Carnegie Hall," she said. "It's a small world and word gets out about a choir."
The Weaver Chorale will join choirs and mixed voice groups from all over North America under the direction of maestro Z. Randall Stroope, an internationally known composer and conductor whose works are performed all over the world.
"I've been performing his pieces for years with my choirs," said Brotherton. To have the opportunity to sing under the direction of someone as renowned as Stroope is rare for a high school group, she added.
The Weaver Chorale group will perform as part of a larger choir, and the singers will have only three rehearsals before the late afternoon Mass at St. Peter's. They will have one dress rehearsal before the Festival Finale concert at the Basilica di Sante Maria sopra Minerva.
"I think the most difficult thing about this trip will be learning how to blend with the other singers – people with different accents, different languages, different cultures," noted Alexandra Little, who sings alto. "We only really have a few hours to rehearse with them."
The Weaver Chorale is beginning rehearsals this month, and in March they plan to have a public concert previewing the entire repertoire they will sing in Rome.
Though the magnet school is small, graduating around 60 or so students each year, it aims to give students exceptional experiences at more than a high school level. Students are challenged musically and the academics are as rigorous as the training in the arts.
"The kids have to do a lot to get into Weaver, write an essay, audition – but their hard work has obvious results," said Deborah Little, Alexandra's mother.
"We have been blessed with exceptional opportunities here at Weaver Academy," Brotherton said. "The level of talent here is amazing. We are very excited at the opportunity to sing in the Vatican."
— Annette K. Tenny, correspondent