This.

Photo Competitions are Awesome.

My photograph of the Grand Prismatic made it into the final round of a photo contest and is now up for voting. (I'm the blue one, 1st row, vertical format.)

Which is super cool. Some of the other entries are also quite fantastic. I'm not sure if voting is restricted to people with university IDs, but you should take a gander at them anyhow.

They also put up mounted prints in high-traffic public spaces. Also very cool. Mine printed significantly darker and redder than I've been used to, which leads me to suspect that I've been adjusting to my monitor- which is probably inaccurate.

I also think I've used "also" far too many times in such a short post. Sorry about that.

Good day, all.

We're Goin' Places

Last spring, we, as in our choir, participated in our usual festivals. We, for lack of a better term, owned. The reprotoire that year consisted of the some of the most beautiful choral music I have ever had the fortune to perform. If you have never heard Sergei Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse Devo, look it up. It is much more impressive in person, certainly. Not to sound smug or anything, but I have felt that our performance, our interpretation, sounds far... well, superior to many others'. Never have we felt such deep emotional connection to our music. When we sang this piece in particular, some of the audience became moved to tears. We were moved to tears.

So in May we took a road trip down to the Heritage festival in Cleveland, which hosted not only choral but instrumental groups. And there we did more than well. There were not many other ensembles present at the time we were there, but we received the highest score. One of the judges, in fact, specified that he had never or only once given a higher score in his (approximately) fifty-year career. As a result, we have earned a spot in another gathering to be held this spring, when the nation's best high-school choirs convene under the direction of one Dr. Eph Ehly.

In Carnegie Hall.

There are no words to express how honored we all are. Most would have been awed to sit audience in that famed hall. We are to take part in a performance. Many who dream of getting to Carnegie deserve it, yet never reach the stage. We are no world-class symphony, no legendary musicians, but we are going to be there. We are going to stand on that stage, and we are going to sing.