Every year The Virginia National Association of Teachers of Singing (VA NATS) hosts student auditions. Students perform pieces for a panel of vocal adjudicators. The adjudicators’ critiques and assessments are helpful both to the students and teachers in terms of improving. Each student receives a score from no less than three judges.
This year our NOVA Voice Majors all received honors scores at the 2024 VA NATS Student Auditions. In addition to that wonderful news, we had two students place 3rd and 4th out of all of the Sophomore Men (Tenor, Baritone and Bass) competing in Virginia. This is a huge!
For the 2024 VA NATS, Congratulations to:
Andrew Foley – Third Place and Honors Score
Vincent Sanfilippo – Fourth Place and Honors Score
Alexandra Richardson – Honors Score
With these impressive scores all three students qualified to move on to regionals! The Mid Atlantic Regional NATS Student Auditions were held in Greenville, SC on March 8-9. The states in our region are Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
In the regionals, Andrew Foley placed fourth for sophomore men! He qualified to move on to the NATS Student Auditions National Preliminaries. Way to go Andrew!
Alexandra Richardson received the highest score of all of the NOVA student! She just missed the cut off. It is much more competitive for women and particularly sopranos.
Unfortunately, Vincent Sanfilippo was sick and unable to participate in the regionals.
It took nine and a half hours of driving to reach the regional auditions in Greenville SC! Both Andrew and Alexandra drove back to Northern Virginia directly after singing Friday, so they could work on Saturday as they had to take Thursday and Friday off from their jobs. This commitment shows just how dedicated and hardworking our NOVA voice majors are.
This is literally a David vs. Goliath win, and we are so proud of them for doing this on their own. We are also extremely thankful to our voice instructor, Cara Cammaroto, for making this opportunity possible for our NOVA students!
We wish Andrew Foley good luck at the National Preliminaries and hope to see him go all the way to the finals held this summer in Knoxville, Tennessee in which the top three get a cash prize!
