Something Extra performs in the atrium of Yorktown High School, providing a Q and A session with Yorktown’s Chamber Choir afterwards. Yorktown’s long-term substitute for the choir program, Kyra Klontz, is in the foreground. Photo by Eden Brown.
The Yorktown atrium was abuzz with parents and residents who had come to hear the Yale University a cappella group as well as the Yorktown Chamber a cappella group.
The Yale a cappella group, “Something Extra,” and the YHS singers, performed at Yorktown High School on March 13.
The Yale group told the story of how they got started. When Yale’s a cappella groups were only male, there were several all-men groups but no female singers. Every year, the male groups came together for a competition on campus, and that year, as the concert was ending, the master of ceremonies noticed a group of women in black tie preparing to come up to the stage. “Oh,” he said, “it looks as though we have a little ‘something extra’ that wasn’t on the program.”
Yorktown’s Chamber Choir also performed, and this was the debut performance for Yorktown’s new smaller a capella group, which practices after school.
The YHS Chamber Choir had a busy week: on March 17, they attended the regional District XII Choral Assessment held in Chantilly, Va. They, and their interim director Kyra Klontz, who has worked with the group since January, received a score of excellent overall, and a superior in sight-reading. Judges noted the pieces they performed were of extreme difficulty, rhythmically complex, and vocally demanding.