2026 Celebration weekends — in addition to Austin, Texas (complete information and registration shown on this website’s home page) — are soon to be announced in Gadsden, Alabama and Greensboro, North Carolina. YouthCUE has several weekends still available to add more events and locations to the list of offerings.
Here’s some of why this model has so been successful for the past three winters in Austin and why your choir would (not “might,” not “could,” not “perhaps would,” but ABSOLUTELY WILL) benefit significantly from participation in a YouthCUE Celebration.
- Diverse repertoire: Included are a couple of challenging selections which will likely not be sung by the individual choirs in their home churches. (However, many of the choirs go home with these two challenging anthems and combine with their church adult choir to sing them for worship or in a special concert setting.) Some of the anthems are quality choral hymn arrangements, some are original scripture settings, one is often in gospel style, one might be global music, another may be an approachable classical or Baroque anthem. Further, one or two a cappella selections are normally part of the repertoire. Almost all are SATB, sometimes with divisi, and perhaps one anthem in the repertoire may be two-part or SAB.
- Six anthems: Normally, the mass choir memorizes three anthems and sings the other three using scores. We normally do not announce which anthems will be chosen for memory until the directors gain experience in rehearsals to determine which pieces “memorize” more readily. Not knowing which anthems will be selected for memory until closer to the Celebration weekend means that the choirs need to work hard on all the anthems and have them within striking distance of memory. In some cases, even during the weekend, we will add another memory piece, then totaling four. At one Celebration event, all the anthems were in good enough condition that making the leap to memory on all of them was not a difficult thing to achieve. And the students’ ability to accomplish that feat was highly energizing for the young singers.
- Advance musical preparation: The repertoire is rehearsed by participating choirs in the several months leading up to the Celebration: The individual directors/choirs of the Celebration work to have their students well prepared before arriving. Most singers arrive ready to polish and blend what they have already learned. The good news is that the majority of the repertoire anthems are pieces which can be used in worship at each choir’s home church.
- Conducting responsibilities: Two or more conductors are often used in rehearsing and performing the anthems. In the case of the Austin Celebration, each anthem now has its own conductor (directors of the participating choirs). Sometimes, when we begin a new annual Celebration event in a new venue, Randy Edwards will do all of the conducting for the first couple of years and then share it with another, eventually handing off all the conducting to participating directors. This has been a nice touch once the Celebration model is well established and running full steam.
- Chamber orchestra: During the weekend, following a productive period of pulling the mass choir together, balancing and blending the sound (usually takes 2-3 one-hour rehearsals to accomplish), a professional or unusually competent collegiate chamber orchestra is dropped into the mix. There is some variation on the instrumentation, but it is customarily Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Flute, and Oboe.
- Custom orchestrations: We have created and produced customized orchestrations to bring added beauty, color, and a shimmer factor to the choral music, but never so strong that it overpowers or “ploughs under” the adolescent voices.
- Streamlined and highly efficient scheduling: The event is typically 23-26 hours in total length, happening, for instance, on Friday evening at 7pm (first rehearsal) to Saturday evening at 5:50pm (5pm Closing Concert which lasts 50 minutes). Another possibility is to begin Saturday at noon and end immediately following worship and lunch on Sunday. In this variation, the choir sings the six anthems for the host venue’s worship service(s) on Sunday morning.
- One night’s lodging: If a group is less than 45 minutes from the Celebration venue, they usually return home overnight and save the expense of lodging in a hotel property. Those who live farther away … some as far as 4 hours … will require an overnight stay. A few groups even lodge in nearby encampments or, in some instances, groups with as few as 6-8 singers might opt to contract with an Airbnb property nearby.
- Many advantages of a choir retreat and a mass choir festival with orchestra, all rolled up into one: Oftentimes, choirs who live in the same town/city as the Celebration will stay in overnight lodging in order to have some group time and community building with their own students. There is time for a late-evening group meal following the first rehearsal on Day 1.
- Overall convenience and efficiency: There are multiple advantages in providing our students a top-shelf choral experience without a great deal of expense or too much investment of time. The time spent in rehearsal for the Celebration gains double use when the local choir sings the repertoire in worship for their home church.
- Choirs, ensembles, and groups of all sizes benefit from working and being together: A YouthCUE Celebration weekend is a great way to introduce 4 or 5 shy, inexperienced, or young singers to a glorious choral experience. It’s also a great way to hammer in some beautiful, usable repertoire for the established choirs comprised of a combination of experienced and novice singers. The inspiration and motivation factor coming out of the experience is something which will significantly benefit the singers of an ensemble of 5 or a choral powerhouse of 75.
- Bigger than just us: Student choirs so traditional, internally successful and self-satisfied can often become totally self-sufficient, cloistered, and disconnected from the joy, laughter, and energy of other groups. When that happens, they are bereft of some of the grandest eye-opening experiences we might provide them. And the most interesting thing is this: they (and, perhaps the directors of these groups) have no idea what they are missing. Drop a choir, any choir, into a larger, musically prepared, and focused group of peers which is twice, three times, ten times their size … and the whole mass of adolescent singers is going to benefit from the experience. We’ve watched the magic occur literally hundreds of times at YouthCUE events. A choir’s disposition, openness towards others, and (don’t look now but …) their sound will move to its next level, blossom, deepen, nuance for the better when they are occasionally introduced into an environment where the stakes are higher, the sound is larger, the beauty is more sweeping, the energy is greater, the diversity of singers is more pronounced, and the participation is more populous. Everyone engaged in this grand mix of YouthCUE music-making grows — the students, the directors, the counselors, everyone involved. Additionally, the inspiration awaiting the audience present at the Ending Concert is normally vividly apparent. Everyone wins. Everyone!
Randy Edwards
Would your church or community consider hosting a future YouthCUE Celebration Weekend (in 2026 or 2027)? If you’d like to explore the idea, email Randy Edwards and he will reach out to you to answer your questions and discuss the options. We think you might be amazed to discover how SIMPLE it is to host the event, and how little cost it would be to your budget.
