The Palo Alto High School choir teamed up with the Burlingame High School choir on May 22 for a grand performance that both moved and excited the audience.

An estimated 150 people packed into the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Redwood City for the free performance. The beautifully designed church, with spectacular stained glass windows, was the location for the event. The high ceilings and stone walls provided quality acoustics for the choir as their voices filled the room.

The concert, entitled "Our Song, A Concert of American Composers," featured the songs of three 20th century American artists: Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre and Leonard Bernstein.

The two choirs showed off their abilities to adapt to a wide array of musical styles and languages by performing pieces from the different composers.

"When the choir puts their music down, get their heads up, and start to feel what they are singing it is a magical moment," Paly choir director Michael Najar said, explaining his feelings about the choir’s first song.

The afternoon performance began with Lauridsen’s "Lux Aeterna." The choir was accompanied by a small professional and student orchestra, conducted by Najar. The five movement song stimulated the audience as the choir lulled them with their soft voices. The piece, sung in Latin, comes from sacred texts that Lauridsen combined into a touching choral score. For most of the song, the music was dominated by the sound of the French horn. Lauridsen plays with the combination of the horn and chorus throughout the composition.

The highlight of the performance was Bernstein’s "Chichester Psalms," the final piece of the afternoon. The lyrics for the song, ware drawn from the Book of Psalms and read in the original Hebrew. This exciting percussion and string filled piece was sure to reawake any drowsy audience members. The three movement song included a lovely solo by Paly junior Sarah "Beth" Nitzan in the second movement.

The performance ended with more than half of the audience in a standing ovation. This was the second-to-last scheduled Paly choir performance of the year.

Najar has stayed close to Burlingame High School, where he used to work before moving down the peninsula last year to teach at Paly. Currently, he teaches one class a week in the evenings at Burlingame.

The Paly choir has grown in size since Najar’s arrival. This year there were 39 members of the Concert Choir, including 11 seniors.

Awards were announced and given out during a short break in the performance. Najar began the Palo Alto awards by presenting two plaques to his choir. For both awards, given out by the California Association for Music Education (CMEA), the Paly Choir received the highest honor, "unanimous superior rating." Several inner-choir awards were also given out. Junior Mackenzie Lee was the biggest winner of the afternoon, claiming the Choir Director’s Award and being a co-recipient of the Music Teacher’s Scholarship award. In an effort to move on and save time, Najar promised more awards were to follow at the Senior Awards Night, June 2, at Paly.