Tyrone High School vocal students are busy preparing for pre-auditions for the PMEA (Pennsylvania Music Educators Association) Choir festival season, which begins October 19, 2025, at Shanksville High School.
Six Tyrone students are fighting for a spot at the district festival.
These students are sopranos Lydia Meredith, Addison Warren, Ella Narehood, altos Braylinne Shaw, Hailey Lowery, and basses Reilly Rawlings and Ryleigh Holmes.
The students have been under the direction of Gabriella Petrarca, who is in her second year of teaching music at Tyrone. She has been guiding students through the challenges that this particular piece of music poses.
“The students began working on their PMEA pre-audition music at the very end of last school year. Many of them were very close to having the whole thing learned by the last day. Their talent and dedication surprise me every day,” Petrarca said.
Senior Braylinne Shaw has been participating in the festival for the past two years and hopes that her third year will be her best.
“I am excited to advance my musicianship by working with different guest directors,” Shaw said.
Pre-auditions determine if a student qualifies to move on to the District Choir Festival. After pre-auditions come districts.
Students who make it through pre-auditions and are selected for District Choir have the opportunity to audition for the Regional Choir. The process continues from Regionals to States, all the way up to All-East Chorus, which features the best vocalists from several states in the eastern region.
There are eight sections. They are soprano 1, soprano 2, alto 1, alto 2, tenor 1, tenor 1, tenor 2, bass 1, and bass 2.
Pre-audition vocalists are given a piece of music selected from a rotation of four songs.
This year, the audition piece is “Song of Exaltation” by John Ness Beck. The students have been preparing to sing the piece since the last week of the 2024-2025 school year.
During the audition, the vocalists are placed in a room with 1-3 judges and the Sergeant in Arms for their section. The Sergeant in Arms is a music teacher from one of the participating school districts, and they organize and run the audition.
The Sargent in Arms will announce the part of the song the competitors will sing and give the vocalists a starting, mid, and end point. If a competitor makes a mistake before the midpoint of the audition, they are offered a one-time use restart. Using the restart does not cause any deduction in score.
The judges are experienced music teachers from the participating schools. To prevent bias, the students sit behind a curtain so the judges cannot see the person auditioning.
The students get a 30-second warm-up. After the judges play the starting pitch, they are expected to sing through the excerpt.
