AHS Hosts New England Show Choir Showdown
By Xander MacKay-Kao
STAFF WRITER
On March 10th and 11th, Andover High School is hosting the New England Show Choir Showdown, or NESCS. Students can pay $10 to watch the largest show choir festival in New England.
From Start to Finish (pictured above) and the other show choir groups will be performing this Saturday and Sunday.
AHS’s Show Choir is made up of three groups that perform through dance and song. Practicing after school, they are Back to Basics (BTB), the bass voice choir, Nothin’ but Treble (NBT), the treble voice choir, and From Start to Finish (FSTF), the mixed voice choir.
A vocal captain and junior, Abinaya Ganesh, said that at Mill City in January, “We did quite well, FSTF got a gold medal… NBT and BTB both got silver.” At Shepherd Hill on February 4th, FSTF got silver, BTB got silver, and NBT got grand champion for the Unisex Division. The medals aren’t given in the sense of 3rd, 2nd, or 1st, but instead in terms of points accrued by the group. They said, “We’re having a really good season this year. I’m really excited.
Preparing for NESCS each year is a long process involving weeks of preparation. Elizabeth Kennedy, the show choir choreographer at AHS, said that they’d been working for the past two months to get groups registered. There needs to be lighting loaded in ahead of time, along with parent volunteers for concessions, ticketing, and the like. Groups often bring a live band and some bring set pieces as well. It’s an adjudicated event, meaning there will be a judging panel providing feedback to each group’s director
Kennedy says, “We got a lot of moving parts to keep track of.
Last year’s NESCS was the first in a few years that was able to be held due to COVID-19. Kennedy said, “Last year’s was great… because of COVID there was a lot of like, ‘Hey, do we remember how to do this?’”
Friday night, March 10, will be the Middle School Division, and Saturday night, March 11th, will be the High School Division. Some of the AHS students will be helping by hosting, meeting with people and directing them where to go. There will be 23 different groups performing over the two days coming from all over New England.
The $10 ticket will be good for the whole weekend.
