Malverne Choir Places First, Performs at Carnegie Hall

The talented members ofSelect Choir have more than one reason to sing a happy tune right now.

The students followed up a first place performance at the Music in the Parks competition held in Williamsburg, Virginia in late April by entertaining an audience at one of the most well-known music venues in the world, Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, last month.

The Malverne High School select choir was one of four school choirs to perform at Carnegie on May 19 as part of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra. The choir, which sang Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” was chosen for this honor based upon an audition tape they submitted earlier in the year. The group practiced several hours every week, putting in plenty of overtime, to ensure a flawless performance.

“It was an honor to perform at Carnegie because so many famous people have performed on that very stage,"  M.H.S. tenth grader Courtney Brown said. "It was very surreal.”

In Virginia, the team took top prize in the Small School A division and outscored mixed choirs in every other division, including the large school divisions. Each team was judged by professors from local universities during the competition, which was held at York High School on April 28.

After the competition was over, students spent the day at Busch Gardens, and attended the awards ceremony in the park that evening. Malverne has performed at the Music in the Parks Competition for the past four years, and has placed first in their division every year. This is the second consecutive year that the team has also placed first against all of the mixed choirs in the other divisions