This picture was sent to us by IUSD vocal music teacher Kaii Lee, who recently chaperoned eight Brywood Elementary sixth-graders and a Canyon View Elementary fifth-grader to the American Choral Directors Association's Western Division Conference in Santa Barbara.
Selected from about 1,200 applicants to be members of the ACDA Honor Chorus, the Irvine students rehearsed with renowned conductor Henry Leck for four days beginning on Feb. 19 before a final performance at the Granada Theatre on Feb. 22. Lee says they sang a half-dozen songs in English, Latin, Hebrew, Portuguese and an East African dialect -- all from memory.
“Our students performed beautifully,” she said. “It is a great accomplishment for them at this age.”
The students are: Brywood sixth-graders Sasha Anand, Ally Chao, Shounok Ghosh, Nathan Hsu, Joshua Kwon, Amala Neernannan, Shivani Pasricha and Varsha Sampath; and Canyon View fifth-grader Angeline Xu.