A Dunedin secondary school is looking forward to having home turf advantage for when they take on the nation’s best choirs.
The Columba College choir Cantus Columba has punched its ticket to the Big Sing Finale at the Dunedin Town Hall in August.
Arts prefect Sophie Canton, 17, said she was absolutely stoked to be selected among the top 24 choirs in the country.
"It’s a huge honour.
"We were secretly hoping for it but we were pretty shocked and excited when we found out."
She felt a "wave of excitement" going up to perform first on stage at the Dunedin Town Hall earlier this month.
"We’ve got the young ones coming up which is really good," Imogen said.
She was keen to represent Dunedin at the competition.
Choir director John Buchanan said that performing on home turf was definitely an advantage.
"You get to sleep in your own bed and you don’t have a noisy neighbour yelling and keeping you awake all night."
The girls at Columba were a great group to work with, he said.
The team was in the "hot spot", performing first at the regional competition at 10.30am.
"Half past 10 in the morning isn’t a particularly good time for singing."
They worked really well together and with the accompanist, Sharon McLennan, who was very sympathetic to the choir’s vocal performance.
The choir performed three songs at the regional competition, including Song, composed by University of Otago professor Anthony Ritchie, who had adapted it to be sung by the Columba choir when his daughters went to the school.
Mr Buchanan said the challenge for the girls was to ensure the songs they rehearsed sounded "fresh" every time they sang them for different audiences, despite having rehearsed them numerous times.
The group will perform the same three songs and another two at the finale in August.
