For the first time in more than two decades, a full LHS choir will be performing at the Kansas Music Educators Association state music festival.

Not only will individual students be going to this year’s KMEA state orchestra, band and choir festivals, but the A Capella choir will be front running as a performance at the convention.

The last time an LHS choir performed at the KMEAs was about 25 years ago. With the greater-than-average number of students participating in the competition, this year is a big one for the music department.

The choir will perform their program “A Matter of Life and Death” at the convention on Feb. 27 in Wichita.

“The songs all have to do with the ideas of maintaining joy and hope even though we may be surrounded by and afraid of death,” choral director Dwayne Dunn said.

Getting chosen for the convention will give the A Cappella choir the honor of having all eyes on them when they perform alongside the other top choirs, bands, and orchestras of Kansas.

“While they are beginning to understand the magnitude of the honor and the type of audience they will be singing for, I don’t think it will really hit them until they get to Wichita and see the performance hall,” Dunn said.

To get chosen for the performance, recordings of last year’s A Cappella choir were screened by a committee of choral directors, who did not know what school they came from while they were judging.

In the end, 40 musical ensembles were chosen for the convention, 16 of those choral, and only five of them high school choirs. Both LHS and Free State will have choirs at the convention.

Along with the A Cappella choir’s performance, 11 individual musicians will represent LHS at KMEA.

In choir, junior Braxton Darrow, junior Bryce Dunn, senior Elizabeth Godinez, sophomore Gavin Jones, senior Reagan Kanter and junior Cameron Stussie. In band, sophomore Adelaine Horan and junior Mary Reed-Weston. In orchestra, senior Laura Berghout, senior Maya Roth and junior James Taylor. All of the individuals were chosen from district ensembles, and it was a long process to finally make it into state.

“Six is the most [choir students who have qualified] in a while,” Dunn said, “But it fluctuates a lot from year to year.”

Auditions for the state ensembles were in late January, and auditioners said it was nerve-racking leading up to it, and that it took a lot of practice to finally feel ready.

“We had to learn three excerpts, and then we had to sight sing something on the spot,” Jones said. “I felt pretty relieved [making it in], because I really thought that I didn’t make it.”

Students are eligible to go as sophomores and some audition all three years for a place in state ensembles.

“It felt really nice to get in as a senior,” Roth said. “I was really excited that I made it because I didn’t make it junior year, and I was really kind of bummed about that, but when I made it this year, I was really happy, so I can be like ‘So I have gotten better,” that I can still achieve things like this.”

Going to state is an opportunity for students grow as musicians because they get to play with other highly-accomplished students in the state, Dunn said.

“Performing in an all-state ensemble is a life changing type of musical experience,” he said. “[You have] the chance to perform together with other musicians who have demonstrated their high level of ability through the audition process… Add to that the chance to work on difficult literature that a student might not ever be able to perform at their home school with a nationally-prominent conductor, and it becomes a very magical and memorable experience.”