Thursday, April 8 the Cameron Dragon Band headed for Northwest Missouri State University's music contest with the Cameron Choir shortly after. The band competed in the afternoon while the choir competed in the late afternoon caused the students in both band and choir a little difficulty with the short amount of time to switch from band to choir.

 

"That was an unfortunate scheduling conflict, but these are the things we deal with," said Band Director Shane Jones.

 

"There was a quick transition between the two, they had to move pretty quickly and didn't get to eat until much later on in the day--not exactly the smoothest, but I think they handled it well," adds Choir Director Brian VonGlohn.

 

Despite the quick changes, both the band and choir both were excellent at the competition. Band received straight ones. There are three judges in the room listening to the band perform and then there is one judge in a separate room to judge the bands sight reading skills; all four judges gave ones. The choir's Mixed Choir and Men's Choir both received a two and the Women's Choir and Chamber Choir received a one.

 

"We got the same scores as we did last year except this year we did three songs," said Mr. Jones. "We were the only band that day that played three songs, but we had the same scores both times and I was very pleased with the kids."

 

The three songs that the band took to contest this year was a march called "Invercargill," a ballad called "With Each Sunset," and a thematic piece called "Haunted Carnival".

 

"I liked them [the pieces] very much. They were really good contrasting style of pieces. We had a traditional style of a march, we had a very emotional piece "With Each Sunset," and  and then we had what we call our dark side with "Haunted Carnival". Probably my favorite song was "With Each Sunset"; it had a lot of emotion in it and it was really a dramatic piece," said Mr. Jones.

 

Just like the band judging, the choir has three judges and then a sight reading judge. "The only group that doesn't have the sight reading is Chamber Choir," clarified Mr. VonGlohn.

 

Each choir group from Cameron sang two songs. Mixed Choir sang "If Love Should Count You Worthy" and "Blessed Be the Name of The Lord", Chamber Choir sang "De Nacht de Gaul" and "Deamon Repe Claudas," Women's Choir sang "Rock Me to Sleep" and "Psalm 67", and Men's Choir sang "Blow ye Winds" and "Low How a Rose Bloom".

 

"My favorite piece by far is "If Love Should Count You Worthy" that Mixed Choir does," said Mr. Von Glahn,"It's an absolutely gorgeous piece."

 

This was Freshman Kelsey Mattox's first choir competition. She competed in Women's and Mixed Choir. "I liked it. I thought that Women's Choir would have gotten a two and that Mixed Choir would have gotten a one, but it was the complete opposite. I'm looking forward to next year's competition."