By Julia Hannon

   Tempe Prep’s Cantamus had the chance to experience a snowy Northern Arizona University campus at this year’s Jazz Madrigal Festival. 

   The festival, also known as Jazz Mad, is a yearly choir festival held at NAU that welcomes high school choirs from all over the Southwest to work with professional singing clinicians. It lasts two days and is one of the largest festivals of its kind in the United States. 

   TPA’s Cantamus was one of the few choirs that was able to make it to Flagstaff to perform and work with the singing clinicians. The festival centers around the singing style, madrigal, which is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. 

   At the festival, Cantamus performed its winter concert set list, which the group had spent the whole year practicing and perfecting with the instruction of TPA’s choir director, Mrs. Turley. 

   During the festival, Cantamus had the chance to listen to NAU’s choir and different guest music groups of national and international stature perform. 

   There were also guest singing clinicians from different universities. The Madrigal clinicians were Dr. Jessica Napoles from the University of North Texas, Dr. Gary Packwood from Mississippi State University and Dr. Julie Yu from Oklahoma City University. The Jazz Clinicians were members of The Swingles with Dr. Benjamin Hawkinson from Millikin University serving as a Jazz and Madrigal Clinician. 

   The most prominent singing group at Jazz Mad was The Swingles, a U.K. singing group that has earned five Grammy awards. The Swingles were Jazz Mad’s guest ensemble because of their incredible skill and natural flair as entertainers. 

   TPA Junior Minh Thu Nguyen described their set list as “a mix of contemporary musical theater, jazz and even songs from the Baroque Era.” She said that listening to all the groups perform was “really magical.”