MHS student gets elected for national choir

Aloera Ostermann, Staff Writer

During nearly every school year students from each region are chosen to attend the National Association for Music Education, the NAfME, for All-National Honor Ensemble. This year one   of our very own students from Manhattan High, junior Alexander Aramouni was chosen to attend. NAfME was held Nov. 26-29 in Orlando, Florida, more specifically at Disney World. Nearly 606 musicians were there in total and 208 of them were selected for choir alone making it the biggest group in attendance.

Being one of the chosen choir members is nearly impossible to do. To even be considered for attending this event a student has to go through the original auditions in their regions audition center, in our case Junction City. Those selected for regionals can advance to the All-State level, and from that one student is chosen to attend NAfME. Even having to face all of these obstacles Aramouni was able to overcome them and become a part of the program.

When applying for NAfME Aramouni sent in a video of him singing; this had to be un-edited and unaccompanied showing the musicians true raw talent. Aramouni received his acceptance email in July.

“I was beyond ecstatic whilst reading the email,” Aramouni said, “As a student who aspires to receive acceptance into a competitive music conservatory following high school, I was very jubilant when I was familiarized with my success!”

He was very happy to be accepted especially considering how hard it is to get into the program. He has been challenged to develop the level of competence needed to even be a candidate for the State level musical groups, making him all the more ecstatic when he received the email.

Once he was in Orlando Aramouni had to memorize some music that they were going to perform as a group near the end of their trip. The group’s director was Dr. Z. Randall Stroope the Professor of Music and Director of Choral/Vocal Studies at Oklahoma State University.

“We learned and memorized a plethora of vocal repertory,” Aramouni said, “with a general time period of three days.”

In those three days they spent over 12 hours of pure rehearsal that was divided into five sessions. Once the rehearsal was over they were able to perform a concert for the hotel they were staying at. The concert was open to the public and there were approximately 3500 people in attendance.

Aside from working on their music the group got to spend a small amount of time exploring Disney World. The students got only three hours in the park on their first day and only five on the following day.

“The amount of time we received to explore Disney World was practically negligible!” said Aramouni.

In his short amount of time at the park Aramouni and his friends got to explore Epcot. He also got the opportunity to check out Magic Kingdom where he ate dinner and only got the chance to ride two rides because of the long lines that come with the fame of the park.  

“Despite the minuscule amount of time we received to explore Disney, I very thoroughly enjoyed the experience of creating music with fellow elite vocalists.” Aramouni said, “The hours I spent rehearsing music with my comrades have become among my best memories of 2017!”