Open house night at the choir room, and there are two sign-up tables by the door, concert choir on the left, show choir on the right. Your daughter is standing between them with a flyer in each hand. The choir director, who’s been talking for fifteen minutes at the front of the room, just announced that show choir auditions are in April and the decisions have to come in this week. You’re standing next to her trying to read both flyers at the same time. Here’s the actual difference between them.
Concert choir
This is the main choir class. It meets during the school day, and most high schools have at least two levels, a beginning concert choir for ninth and tenth graders and a top-tier concert choir for upperclassmen. Concert choir sings standing still, in formal concert clothes, usually a long black dress or a tuxedo, and the repertoire is classical, sacred, folk, and some contemporary. Concerts are at the school auditorium, and the audience is parents, grandparents, and maybe a music critic from the local paper.
Most kids in the choir program are in concert choir, and the top concert choir is often the hardest group to get into because the level of musicianship is high and the seniors hold most of the chairs. Concert choir is the foundation, it’s where the voices get built.
Show choir
This is the other choir, and it’s part chorus, part dance team, part traveling competition group. Show choir wears costumes, does choreography, has a band behind them, and learns five to seven songs that connect into a twenty-minute themed show. They travel to competitions on Saturdays from January to April.
Show choir is usually an extracurricular at the high school level. Some schools have one, some have two or three at different competitive levels, and the top group is auditioned in spring of the previous year. The time commitment is real, most show choirs rehearse three or four times a week, with extra Saturday rehearsals during competition season, plus costume fittings, choreography days, and competition Saturdays.
How to tell where your kid fits
A few questions. Does she love singing more than she loves performing, she’s concert choir. Does she love performing more than she loves singing, she’s show choir. Does she hate dancing, she’s concert choir. Does she have a competitive streak about the experience of putting on a show, she might be show choir.
Most kids start in concert choir in ninth grade and then audition for show choir in their second year if they’re interested. A few audition straight into show choir as freshmen, which is fine if they have the dance background.
The dance requirement
Show choir is half dance, and if she doesn’t dance, she’s going to feel behind in show choir auditions. That doesn’t mean she has to be a serious dancer, most show choir directors teach the choreography from scratch and it isn’t as technical as a dance team. But she needs to move with confidence. A summer of intro contemporary or jazz at a local studio is the most common preparation: six to eight classes over the summer before audition season. She doesn’t need to do leaps. She needs to be able to count music while moving.
If she’s a strong singer who hates moving, the answer is concert choir, and there’s no shame in that, the top concert choir is the more selective ensemble at most schools.
The audition itself
Show choir auditions usually have three pieces. A solo song, sometimes a cut of a Broadway tune, sometimes a pop song, with the audition packet specifying. Most show choir directors want to hear a strong belt and a clear head voice. A dance call where the director or choreographer teaches a routine in about thirty minutes, the kids learn it together, and then they perform it in groups of four to six. This is the most stressful part of the audition for non-dancers. And a vocal exercise, range tests, sight-reading, and maybe a piece sung in unison with two or three other singers.
Some auditions also include an interview where the director asks why she wants to be in show choir. The honest answer is best.
What to budget
Costumes usually run three to six hundred dollars per year, often more for the top group with multiple costumes per show. Some programs include this in dues, some bill separately. Competition fees, charter buses, and hotel rooms for overnight competitions add up, most show choirs budget eight hundred to fifteen hundred per kid per year all in. Booster fundraisers offset some of this, and most show choir programs have aggressive fundraising calendars.
If money is tight, ask the director quietly about a scholarship or a payment plan. Most programs have one. Few advertise it.
A note on switching
A kid can move between concert choir and show choir if she needs to. Some kids find show choir isn’t for them after a year and step back to concert choir. Some go the other way. The choir directors usually expect this. The kid isn’t failing if she makes a change, she’s figuring out what fits.
Where to put your bet
If she’s a strong singer with no dance background and she wants to sing seriously, concert choir is the path. She’ll probably audition for all-state, work on her voice, and look at college choir programs. If she wants the social and performance side of choir and she likes to move, show choir is the path, she’ll travel, compete, perform in matching outfits, and have a peer group that’s wildly close. If she wants both, she’ll do both, since most show choir kids are also in concert choir during the day. Concert choir is the class. Show choir is the extracurricular.
Either way, she’s singing. That’s the win.