This year, Har-Ber high school is playing host to over 100 schools and their choirs for this year’s Choral Performance Assessment, or CPA. This assessment is traded back and forth between Bentonville and Har-Ber high schools every other year, and this year it’s the Har-Ber’s turn.
“We get all of the information near the end of January and that’s when most of the real planning begins, though things like music selection can happen weeks in advance,” said Har-Ber’s choir director, Stephen Erwin.
Choir directors, Erwin and Brown, have been preparing the Har-Ber choirs for this assessment since the end of first semester, carefully choosing their music to fit the rules set up by the board chairman. Each choir must have a piece in a foreign language, an acapella piece, and one other piece selected from a list of pre-accepted music.
“We look at the smaller details like dynamics and diction more for this. We look at those things a little for concerts, but no where near on this scale,” said senior Cat Campbell.
108 choirs will be flooding into Har-Ber’s PAC over a three day period to sing for a panel of three judges who all have the music laying in front of them, listening for any and all mistakes. Everyone is trying for a first division in performance, and again in sight reading sheet music after their performance on stage.
“I hold our people to a little higher standard than I do other schools,” said Erwin.
Our school’s mixed choirs Camerata and Bel Canto, Strata girls, Select Women, and the Select Men all hope to win first division across the board and qualify for State Festival this April in Conway. Har-Ber has a tradition of scoring high in the years our school has competed and this year hopes to be no different.