President of the Choir Program, senior alto Anna Bella Shimazaki is the one student from Dominion that was selected for the 2024 Virginia Music Educators Association (VMEA) Senior Honors Choir. Shimazaki is currently working to make her way to a recognition on Dominion’s Wall of Fame with her participation in this year’s conference.
After starting school choir and voice lessons in seventh grade, Shimazaki has since continued to be recognized for All-District Choir all three years of high school, make first chair with a perfect score, and last year attend Virginia Governor’s School for Performing Arts. She plans to continue singing in college and minor in vocal performance.
Choir director My-Van Nguyen, who has been Shimazaki’s teacher for four years, said, “I’m really proud of her for going after the opportunity, for preparing for it so diligently. The thing I’m most excited [about] for [her] is, it’s such a cool experience to be in Norfolk with 130 of the best seniors around the entire state.”
Shimazaki gave many thanks to all the guidance from Nguyen. “Over the past four years, she’s been overly supportive of everybody and very, very helpful. She’s very knowledgeable [about] everything [that] has to do with music,” Shimazaki said.
(Courtesy of Shimazaki)
While Nguyen will not be alongside Shimazaki, she will be helping at the conference and is excited for Shimazaki to have this opportunity. “She just has a naturally gorgeous voice. She has always had a very warm and beautiful voice. She’s also a very good musician in terms of sight reading and musicality. I think she has always been that way. She went to Governor’s School this summer and really honed those skills. I think she was a pretty natural fit for it, and she worked really hard to prepare,” Nguyen said.
This year, the Virginia Music Educators Association Conference Senior Honors Choir will be held in Norfolk, Virginia, November 21st through 23rd. Following her Senior Honors Choir Performance, Shimazaki is one of two Dominion students to be selected for the American Choral Directors Association National Honors Choir. With 5,000 other applicants from around the country, Shimazaki and Layla Zucaro are among 1,200 other students selected to perform in Dallas, Texas in March of 2025.
VMEA is a statewide association that works to promote quality music education and to highlight musical students across the state. While Nguyen encourages all her senior students to apply, seven students submitted an application which is open to all 12th grade students enrolled in a VMEA member’s school choral ensemble. Through the online application Opus Events, students performed “If Music Be the Food of Love” and completed one sight-reading example, and submitted the entire audition virtually. Applicants are then judged and scored based on seven topics including: Vocal Quality, Rhythmic Accuracy and Sight Reading.
