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• Age Requirements: young women ages 5th-8th grade
• Eligibility Requirements: excellent intonation
• Includes multi-level classroom theory training
• Prepares singers for our top ensemble: Bravura!
• Major performances: Winter and Spring
• All singers are required to participate in an audition.  Since singers at this level are young, auditions for Ragazze are run in a non-intimidating and relaxed format.  Parents are invited and encouraged to stay in the room for the audition.  Singers do not need to prepare anything for the audition.  Molly Lindberg, Artistic Director, will lead singers through a brief vocalization and theory placement assessment.  Auditions last twenty minutes.
• Auditions are held once-per-year each spring.  No mid-year entrance is permitted.

Ragazze offers singers an academic based choral experience.  The year-long, multi-level curriculum includes the study and development of choral artistry, vocal technique, music theory, and performing style.  As part of their weekly time with the Ragazze ensemble, singers receive thirty minutes of dedicated music theory instruction and sixty minutes of repertoire instruction.  Choral repertoire is rehearsed with the full ensemble, while theory instruction is implemented in a classroom setting.  Each theory level has its own instructor and dedicated classroom.

Theory study is undertaken in the interpretation and application of music reading.  Assessment of each singer determines her placement in one of four theory levels to best meet her needs:

• Beginner-Students learn basic music-reading vocabulary relating to pitches, note values, and musical symbols. Beginning sight-singing focuses on simple rhythmic meters and an elementary emphasis on pitch intervals.
• Advanced Beginner-Students in this class continue to develop their music-reading skills through the study of key signatures and progressive analysis of intervallic relationships between pitches. Rhythmic study and interpretation extends to include metric subdivisions and dotted rhythms.
• Intermediate-Ragazze's Intermediate curriculum includes an increased emphasis on the expressive features of music reading, rhythmic interpretation of complex time signatures, enharmonic pitches, and identification and sight-singing of all pitch intervals within major scales. Activities in ear-training also reinforce students’ abilities to identify intervallic relationships and non-tonal pitches.
• Advanced-Music theory classes at the Advanced level expand instruction to include syncopation, conducting, varied interpretation of complex time signatures, analysis of minor tonalities, and sight-singing in two-part harmony. Ear-training activities allow students to apply acquired skills to music dictation.

Singers complete end of year assessments to determine their theory placement for the following year.

• Weekly rehearsals: Mondays, 7-8:30 pm
• Grace Lutheran Church, 200 N. Catherine St., La Grange

• Weekly rehearsals: Thursdays, 7-8:30 pm
• Redeemer Lutheran Church, 345 S. Kenilworth, Elmhurst

Occasionally, Ragazze will also have a Sunday afternoon rehearsal in order to rehearse shared repertoire with the Bravura ensemble. Finalized rehearsal schedules are provided to families by August 1st of each year. There are no rehearsals held during the summer.

Concerts and Service

• Spirito! Ragazze performs at each of the Spirito! major concerts in winter and spring, in addition to joining the Bravura ensemble for selected repertoire.
• Spirito! Ragazze shares its gifts by singing at area churches four times each year in addition to singing at specially selected service events in the community.

• Finalized year-long calendar is distributed by August 1st of each year.
• Parent orientation meeting will take place late-August or early-September
• Weekly e-mail reminders are sent to parents every Monday morning to help our families stay on track.
• Quarterly e-newsletter is distributed to all families and supporters.