Local high school music students will have the opportunity to perform a concert with some of Ohio State’s finest female singers.
Students from Bexley, Kenton Ridge, the Greater Columbus High School Corral and the Columbus Children’s Choir will join Ohio State’s Women’s Glee Club and Ladies First in a joint performance Jan. 31.
The Greater Columbus High School Corral was formed less than a year ago and will be performing for the first time. It practices once a week at OSU.
“This is a really big opportunity for OSU to reach out to high school students,” Ladies First Director Emily Wolfe said. They will experience the thrill of performing on stage in front of an audience and also see some of the other parts of campus.
Each high school group will perform between two and four songs separately, and The Glee Club and Ladies First will sing six songs. All the groups will perform one or two songs as a large group at the end of the concert.
The concert will not follow a single, concrete musical theme.
“High school groups are probably doing music that they are getting ready for their festival and contest seasons coming up,” Glee Club Director Richard Schnipke said.
Schnipke has directed the Women’s Glee Club for almost a year, and has experience teaching at the high school level. He said that taking the position provided him a great opportunity to fulfill his goal of working in a college environment.
The group currently consists of 83 women that perform as many as three major concerts per quarter. They will be performing another joint concert with The Men’s Glee Club, and will collaborate with the OSU opera department near the end of March.
Anyone can audition, and the club occasionally grows as large as 100 people.
Ladies First is an a capella group of 15 singers. Members all started out in Women’s Glee Club, and auditioned for their place in Ladies First.
Wolfe determines who makes the final cut. Her decision is more complicated than just selecting the best singers. “It’s not always about the best voices because sometimes the best voice may not sound the best within the group,” she said. The goal is to make “many voices sound like one.”
Ladies First often performs in smaller shows than the large Glee Club. They perform vocal jazz, folk, spiritual and classical music. Before the end of the quarter they will sing for an OSU Board of Trustees meeting and for a tribute to veterans.
First, however, they will join singers from local high schools. The joint concert will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. in Weigel Auditorium at 1866 College Rd. General admission tickets are $6. Senior citizen and student tickets are $4.
