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By Morgan Taylor – Editor-In-Chief

Jonathan Law senior choir member Kruttika Gopal will join many other talented musicians in the National Association for Music Education’s 2018 All-National Honor Ensembles in Orlando, Florida.

The event will take place on November 25-28 at Disney Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and will include an array of performances from a Guitar Ensemble and Jazz Choir to a Symphony Orchestra and a Concert Band.

“It has been such an honor to watch Kruttika grow as a musician throughout the years,” Law choir teacher Ms. Jones said. “Kruttika shows such class and nuance when she performs and is always aiming to improve her skill and craft in and out of the choral classroom.”

The ensemble only includes 550 students from 49 states and territories.

“I am so honored and excited to be given this opportunity, and endlessly thankful to Ms. Jones, my family, and my friends for all their support,” Gopal said.

Students were chosen through an audition process and must have priorly been a part of their state-level honor ensemble programs.

“For the audition, I had to submit a video of me performing an old Shakespeare chorus piece that they had chosen,” Gopal said. “But for the Regional and All-State auditions that made me eligible for Nationals, they were in-person with a judge and you had to sing scales, a piece, and sight-read music on the spot that they chose for you.”

The selected few will be rehearsing a challenging piece of music and will be led by five of the most prominent conductors in the United States during their performance.

“I have to self-prepare the pieces that the music directors at Nationals send to me,” Gopal said. “I need to learn six or seven songs on my own and they must be prepared fully by the time I go to the festival in Florida.”

The music will be chosen by the directors soon.

“The directors will be sending out all the music by the end of September,” Gopal said.

The way the National ensemble will rehearse will be much different then the way the choir rehearses at Law.

“Since the festival is only four days, the choir at Nationals will move a lot faster in perfecting each song by the concert day compared to how we have several weeks of class leading up to concerts in Law Choir,” Gopal said. “It will be rigorous but I am excited for the challenge.”

The National Association for Music Education is one of the world’s largest arts education organizations and has been providing resources for students, parents, and teachers nationwide for more than a century.

It has more than 60,000 members at a local, state and national levels and has become the national voice of music education in the U.S.

Jones said she couldn’t be prouder or Gopal’s achievement.

“Kruttika deserves every accolade she could get for receiving this high honor,” said Jones. “She is a true testament of what hard work, dedication and perseverance can achieve and we are so honored to make music with her! This is just the beginning of Kruttika’s success story.”