By Victoria Sanchez and Jennifer Newton, Courier Staff Writers
Over the spring break on Friday April 6th, the James Logan High school Choirs: Advanced Concert Choir, Show Choir, Jazz Choir, and Chamber Choir traveled to Anaheim, California to compete in the Anaheim Heritage Festival. It is a combined competition of different choirs and bands who come to compete from all over the United States. 
James Logan only competed in the choir portion of the competition. There were 10 different schools who competed in the music festival and 30 different performances total. Each school’s set had to consist of three different songs and had about 15 minutes per set. There was no required piece which some selective competitions make choirs all choirs perform. There were three adjudicator’s who had to give a total score out of 100 points. The highest score possible to receive would be a perfect 300 points.
During each performance adjudicators provided recorded and written feedback on all the songs of the set. After each set concluded a selected adjudicator would hold a small clinic while the choir was on stage and would help fix certain parts of each song and use different techniques to better the set.
On April 7th, the Disneyland Resort hosted the award ceremony for the competition the following night. The show opened with a performance by the Disney performers and special appearances by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, *****, and the star of the show who kept the audience engaged the whole time was Merlin. He introduced the Masters of Ceremony, the director of the Heritage Music Festival to hand out the awards.
When coming up for the awards, two representatives from the announced choir had to get up and accept the plaque. The two representatives for Advanced Concert Choir was the ambassador, Julian Hodgson, and Soprano section leader, Jacky Pernia, Megan Ko, and Poleen Reyes accepted the award for Jazz choir. For Chamber Choir, it was Sydney Ancheta and Mara Alagon, and for Show Choir Ambassador, Kelsey and dance captain Victoria Mahanpour, accepted the award.
The scoring concluded to winning bronze, silver, or gold. James Logan was put into the 3A category which consists of a student body of over 1,200 students. Three of the four choirs for James Logan won Gold. Advanced Concert Choir, Jazz Choir, and Show Choir. Chamber Choir received a Silver first place award. Each year the competition gives out the Sweepstakes award which the Advanced Concert Choir of James Logan won. The award entails that for each choir the adjudicators take the two highest scoring songs from each set and adds them up. One of the adjudicator’s scores consisted of a 92/100 for Cantate Domino, a 91/100 for Come Sweet Death, and whopping 97/100 for Kaisa-Isa Niyan.
In the James Logan Choir Program, a 97 is the highest score that an Advanced Concert Choir has ever received in the history of the program and in Ms. McShane’s 19 years of teaching.