St. Mary's Bands and Choirs take the Gold at the San Diego Heritage Festival

The San Diego Music Trip marked the first time that the entire music department, including the bands and the choirs, traveled to San Diego, California and competed in the Heritage Festival from March 25-30, 2015. It was a terrific experience, full of wonderful memories for the 141 participants and chaperones. 

All participating groups received Gold Awards at the festival and because of that, the entire music department was awarded the Festival Sweepstakes Trophy. The Handbell Choir received the highest score of all of the groups at the Festival with 298 out of 300. The Varsity Ensemble won the Outstanding Choir Trophy while both the Varsity Ensemble and the St. Mary’s Handbell Choir won Adjudicator Trophies for their performances. Three students, Ryoya Wakamatsu, Andy Kim, and Do-Kyoung Heo were recognized for their outstanding solos and received Maestro Awards. Edward Sweeney was given the Ovation Award which recognizes a performer for excellence in musical achievement and contribution to the community service. 

It was an amazing recognition for the outstanding work of St. Mary's High School musicians!! A big thank you to chaperones Ms. Alexandra, Mr. Stovall, Ms. Bassett, Mr. Bowring, Ms. Wilson, Ms. Carr, Ms. Nagakura, Ms. Swain, Ms. Ramage. Congratulations to directors Ms. Reynolds, Mrs. and Mr. Stenson.

Heritage Festival Results: 

St. Mary's Concert Band---Gold Award

St. Mary's Jazz Band--Gold Award

St. Mary's Handbell Choir--Gold Award

St. Mary's ISC Mixed Choir--Gold Award

St. Mary's Men's Choir--Gold Award

St. Mary's Varsity Ensemble--Gold Award

International Show Choir--Gold Award. 

Entire Music Department—FESTIVAL SWEEPSTAKES TROPHY

Choirs—CHORAL SWEEPSTAKES TROPHY

Varsity Ensemble—OUTSTANDING CHOIR TROPHY 

Varsity Ensemble—ADJUDICATOR TROPHY

St. Mary’s Handbell Choir—ADJUDICATOR TROPHY

Ryoya Wakamatsu—MAESTRO AWARD

Andy Kim—MAESTRO AWARD

Do-Kyoung Heo—MAESTRO AWARD

Edward Sweeney—OVATION AWARD

Choir News December 2014

Varsity Ensemble: The Varsity Ensemble has been selected to perform at the 2015 ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) National Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah from February 25-28, 2015. Over 250 of the top choirs auditioned and only 24 were selected. Their concert venues will include the world famous Mormon Tabernacle and Abravanel Hall, home of the Utah Symphony. This is a great honor for the boys and St. Mary's International School.

St. Mary's Choirs and Bands to Participate in the San Diego Heritage Festival: This coming March, 2015, the St. Mary's Choirs and Bands will represent St. Mary's International School at the Heritage Festival in San Diego, California. St. Mary's will be well represented with over 130 students participating. While there the concert band, jazz band, men's choir, varsity ensemble, and international show choir will represent St. Mary's as they compete in this festival. 

Titones cover of "Tsunami" 

New cover of Southern All Stars' (サザンオールスターズ）TSUNAMI by Titones! This is a song that the group was planning to perform at Hamonepu(a cappella competition on a Japanese national TV show). Although they made it to Top 50, they couldn't proceed to a subsequent round for Top 12, so they never had a chance to share this piece. Please listen to it, share it, and download it if you like it! Arrangement by Tim Liao

Lead vocal/Tenor-Jae Yoon Jung
Lead Vocal2/ Tenor-Tim Liao
Tenor- Hyung Joon Jun
Baritone- Nate Klein
                                                      Bass- Kazuya Ogino
                                                      Voice Percussion- Yongchul Yoon

Links:
St. Mary's Choirs Facebook page
St. Mary's Youtube Channel
St. Mary's International School homepage

2013 Varsity Ensemble Trip

St. Mary’s International Varsity Ensemble Budapest Trip

Results of the Budapest International Choral Competition

Congratulations to the Varsity Ensemble for their performance at the 14^thInternational Choir Competition and Festival in Budapest, Hungary.  This competition included 62 choirs from 23 countries in 12 divisions over three days of activity.  

The Varsity Ensemble competed in one of the toughest categories with an age range of 14-24 years old of male and female groups.  The Varsity Ensemble scored a Gold award level three, which was higher than several other category winners including a college Mens Choir from Europe.  

The Gold III award entitles the Varsity Ensemble to to compete in the World Choir Games Championship Competition, World Choir Championships, and the World Grand Prix of Choral Music. Again, Congratulations to the Varsity Ensemble.

Complete results

Videos of the performances 

Tuesday, March 26 performance at the Budapest Spring Festival.

                                    Interkultur Budapest International Choral Competition Performance

Book and DVD featuring the St. Mary's Varsity Ensemble

St. Mary's Choirs are actually published! Finally, the Book and DVD about how the St. Mary's Choirs creates their sound through movement is published through Hal Leonard.  Additionally, it's available from Amazon.com and JWPepper.com:

Heritage Festival Results

‎
5 Gold Awards, 2 Adjudicator Awards, 1 Choral Sweepstakes Award, 1 Outstanding Choral Program Award, and 4 Maestro Awards. Outstanding!

All five groups- the Senior Handbell Choir, Varsity Ensemble, Men's Choir, International Mixed Choir (the show choir's classical set), and the International Show Choir- received Gold Awards.  Additionally, the Varsity Ensemble and the Senior Handbell Choir each received Adjudicator Awards.  Adjudicator Awards are given to groups who receive scores of 95 or higher from each adjudicator.  

Because all groups received gold awards, St. Mary's was awarded the Choral Sweepstakes Award.  St. Mary's also received the Outstanding Choral Program Award at the festival.  This special honor was to acknowledge that all of our performances combined scored higher than any of the other groups.

The four Maestro Awards were given to Billy Jung, Alisa Kusunoki, Juno Lee, and Harry O'Sullivan for their outstanding solo performances.  They were the only vocalists to receive these awards. Others receiving Maestro Awards were instrumental soloists.  

Thank you for letting your children be a part of our choral program!  We are so proud of their accomplishments. 

See the Videos page for the performances.