By KELCY DOLAN

“It was surreal. There was rarely a moment during practice or performances where your whole body wasn’t covered in goosebumps,” Nicole Morales, an incoming senior at Pilgrim, said of last year’s All National Honors Choir.

Morales and three other Warwick Public School students will be going to this year’s National Choir. The other three students, Abbey Cambra, Tyler Nordin and Matt Smith, are all incoming seniors to Vets High School.

The All National Choir, sponsored by the National Association for Music Education (NAFME), brings just over 300 high school singers from across the country together to put on a performance with other musical ensembles. This year’s practice and performance will be October 25-28 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Students are eligible for the National Choir once they have made it to the all-state level, then they are open to submit audition tapes to be a part of the Honors Choir.

Jacqueline Soares, choir director at Pilgrim, said, “They get so much more out of the video than just how you sound.”

NAFME is looking at every applicant’s expression, presentation, breathing, dynamics and more in every submission.

Students must also be sponsored by a teacher affiliated with the local NAFME chapters; both Soares and Vets Choir director Nancy Kennedy are members of the Rhode Island Music Education Association. Both directors helped their respective students throughout the application process and will also chaperone them while in Nashville.

Soares and Kennedy said that it was rewarding to see their students accepted into the choir.

“It speaks to the quality of the programs, the teachers and their talent,” Kennedy said. “We help the process along. We work for this, too. We coach and guide them, but in the end they sing.”

Soares said that when you find a connection with a student, through a passion you both share, you want to see them succeed.

“You pour so much into a student and you see them rise to the top. It’s really rewarding when they reach their goals,” she said.

Throughout the four-day program teachers have the chance to visit workshops and professional development seminars on music education.

The students found out late in June that they had been accepted into the National Choir, and for Morales, Smith and Nordin, who also attended last year as singers, it was a second chance at the opportunity of a lifetime.

This is Cambra’s first year as a part of the chorus, and she began to cry, she was so excited.

“I really didn’t think I was going to make it,” she said. “I will get to say I sang with a national choir with amazing musicians from around the country. That’s crazy,” she said.

The other three students who had been before said the experience is “life-changing.”

Nordin said among singers there is an immediate bond or connection because everyone is there for the same goal, to put on an incredible concert.

Smith noted that although there isn’t a “perfect concert,” after the National Choir performance you feel like you’ve come as close as you can.

He said, “It is a great opportunity to show off what you can do. It’s exciting to perform with other singers on the same skill level as you are.”

Kennedy explained that it’s very rare to have students go more than once and it’s the “best representation of what music teachers can do.”

In the last few years Warwick students, as well as their respective directors, received financial support from the school department. However, this year they will not be receiving any and are thus holding small fundraisers to help pay for airfare and the $650 registration fee.

The next fundraiser will be a car wash on August 15 at Vets High School between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.

For more information on the choir visit the NAFME website at www.nafme.org. For more information on RIMEA visit www.rimea.org.

To help the students financially, visit their carwash August 15 at Vets High School.

You could also send donations to either of the schools in the form of a check made out to the Choir Programs in the care of each respective chorus director. Vets address is 2401 West Shore Rd. and Pilgrim’s is 111 Pilgrim Pkwy.