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Reading the music, Audrey Derdeyn ’26 and Zoeya Chowdhury take a breath before their part enters the song. Each song consisted of multiple parts, making entrances and different harmonies the greatest indicator of the competition-level music.
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Loud and proud, Ana Jovanovic ’27 sings out during the Chamber performance at the MADS Fest Preparatory Concert. Singers worked each part and every block of choir in order to properly master the music for the concert.
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Focused, sophomores Andrew Davis and Jack Brandes sing their lower part for the show. Singers used binders to help with the memorization of words to properly multi-task singing and sight-reading, a skill all singers achieved with time and effort.
Melodies of all styles filled the Hope Presbyterian Church as students from Vista Ridge High School, McNeil High School, Leander High School, and Vandegrift High School all joined Westwood Innova and Chamber choir to prepare for their upcoming contest, the Madrigal Festival. The choir hosted their preparatory concert on Tuesday, Feb. 24 to show parents the work that had been going on behind the scenes to prepare for the upcoming contest season.
With every choir performing three songs, the audience was fed a variety of musical tastes varying from classical to modernly adapted pieces, giving everyone something to love. Though the upcoming competitions will likely set up the following schools against each other, the interscholastic cheering for others was louder than the singing itself.
“It was crazy when everyone was singing,” Aanya Pathak ‘28 said. “Some choirs were really good and it was just an amazing experience for us all to get to listen to so many different choirs with different styles. The best part is that even when other schools were performing, everyone was cheering as if it was their own.”
Innova performed three songs of different types; Ergen Deda by Peter Lyondev, Annie Laurie by Arthur Frackenpohl, and Dancing-Song by Zoltan Kodaly. The varsity mixed choir, Chamber, performed Venite, Exultemus Domino by Jan Sweelinck, Surge Illuminare by Michael John Trotta, and Talaa Min Beyt Abuha by Abu-Khader. Alongside the choirs, directors Andre Clark and Emma Degraaf led the event with skill. It was a quick and enjoyable evening for all music lovers of the audience.
“I think that our best song was Ergen Deda because it sounded so good,” Pathak said. “I think it’s our hardest song for sure and we’ve struggled a lot with it in class so I’m really glad we were able to perform it well at the concert. The audience also loved it so it was great to see others love it as much as us.”
The Westwood crowd erupted in applause after McNeil’s memorable performance of Follow the Drinking Gourd (S. Gibbs) that included various dynamic changes between loud melodies to quiet notes placed throughout the song. Similarly, after Chamber and Innova performed, students from different schools stood up to recognize the spectacular performance the choirs had just put on for the audience.
“My favorite song to listen to was Follow the Drinking Gourd by the McNeil choir because it has so many parts that you just didn’t know who was singing when,” Saloni Chitari ‘28 said. “It was such a great combination of every good voice of that choir. In a way, that kind of summarized the concert, a beautiful harmony created by so many distinct and different individual sounds.”
The Innova and Chamber choirs will perform at the Madrigal Festival at the Foundry Church in Houston, Texas on Saturday, March 7.
![Gazing into the audience, Wes Autry ’26 as Mr. DePinna poses like the Discus Thrower as Mayla Montgomery ’26 as Penny Sycamore paints him. Mr. DePinna was especially absurd, requiring intense amounts of committment from Autry and resulting in an All-Star Cast honor at competiton. “I never expected anything like that,” Autry said. “[This is] the first year I’ve ever gone to UIL, and winning an award from it is gratifying. It’s something I never thought I would achieve, and so achieving that makes me feel like everything I’ve done here wasn’t pointless.”](https://westwoodhorizon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Screen-Shot-2026-03-25-at-3.28.43-PM-1200x799.png)
