Choral connections

Members of the University of Delaware's Delaware Choral Scholars (DCS) are fully prepared to do something hard. When they take the stage at the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing (EGP) on April 18, they will be competing against the world's elite choral ensembles and performing challenging contemporary repertoire.

And this is after months of intense preparation and whirlwind travel to arrive at the EGP, which is being held in Maribor, Slovenia.

But for first-year graduate student Alondra Gonzalez, one of the hardest parts of the DCS experience has been adjusting to calling her former high school choir teacher by his first name.

"We're working on transitioning to Tom," she said. "It's a hard habit to break, but I started by dropping the 'Mr.' and just calling him Kuchler."

She's making the change because the two singers are peers in DCS, not teacher and student.

The ensemble is a unique University group composed of current choral students and program alumni, many of whom are music teachers, who are selected in a blind audition process.