The entire upper school choral program performed in a private concert for the University of Southern California choir director and competed at the Heritage Festival Competition from April 8-12.

At the Heritage Festival, a combined choir with members from Wolverine chorus, Bel Canto and Chamber singers won three first-place Gold Awards in the Men’s, Women’s and Concert Choir categories. The choir program also won best overall choral ensemble and the Choral Program Sweepstakes trophy.

Before the Harvard-Westlake choral program headed out to their Golden State Choral Tour, the upper school program performed for USC choir director Jo-Michael Scheibe.

The choir was originally scheduled to perform at the SCVA Chamber Choir Festival March 24. However, the festival was cancelled because not enough high school choirs signed up, so the upper school choral program ended up performing in the Festival Clinic Concert. The concert was held in Rugby Auditorium and was only for the Harvard-Westlake upper school choral program.

During the performance, Scheibe gave comments about each choir on stage and provided written comments about the Harvard-Westlake choral program.

“His most impactful comment of the night came at the end: ‘I cannot envision there being a finer overall high school choral program in the state of California,’” performing arts teacher Rodger Guerrero said.

Harvard-Westlake is invited to participate in the Heritage Festival Competitions every year. Although all singers from the Wolverine Chorus were qualified to participate in the Golden State Choral Tour, there were only enough slots for 39 singers this year. By combining the Bel Canto, Wolverine Chorus and Chamber Singers chorus the singers created a new choir specifically for the tour.

“Both of our groups did really well, especially considering we were kind of a mixed group that was thrown together,” Brendan Rose ’17 said.