Lake Oswego choir wins first place at Oregon state competition
Published 5:07 pm Friday, May 23, 2025
- Tara Bamford and the LOHS A Capella Choir (Mac Larsen/Lake Oswego Review)
The Lake Oswego A Capella Choir earned first place in the Oregon State Activities Association 6A Choir Competition for the first time in the program’s history.
The state choral competition and festival took place the weekend of Saturday, May 10. Lake Oswego earned first from among 24 other schools and beat out West Salem High School in second place and Oregon City High School in third.
“What I’ve stressed to the students throughout the year is, of course I’m elated we won state, but that can’t be the goal,” said director Tara Bamford. “Even though we have these rubrics, there’s a lot of subjective-ness to art.”
The state choir competition includes a judged performance of each choir’s selected music and a sight-reading section, when each choir needs to perform a song that they’ve never seen or practiced before.
“It was the first time at state that we knew that we had done really well and I think it was the first time that the rankings hadn’t mattered,” said senior Rowan Ducker. “Because I feel like people were so happy with just the way the performance went and they knew that no matter what the scores turned out to be, we were all very emotionally invested in it.”
The school’s victory at state built on its fourth place finish in 2023 and second place in 2024.
“It was kind of surreal to hear all of these different schools perform and see what their programs were,” said junior Claire Hashimoto.
There are five student choirs at LOHS and the largest group — a capella choir — competes at the state championship. Windjammers is the school’s advanced small group choir that performs around Lake Oswego and beyond.
Tara Bamford and the LOHS A Capella Choir (Mac Larsen/Lake Oswego Review)
“I felt like when we stepped on that stage we were linked,” said junior Aspen Gross. “We were locked in. We were just together. We have so many bonds as people and as musicians and those connections really helped us feel the music all that much more.”
In January, the Lake Oswego choral students traveled to Southern California for a trip to Disneyland and participated in a Disney music workshop.
After a pair of all school performances on Friday, May 23, the choir room was packed with prospective music students.
The final LOHS choir concert of the year is at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 29. The choir also performs at graduation on Friday, June 6.
