On Jan. 21 through Jan. 24, West Texas A&M University School of Music hosted a free event known as Vocal Arts Week. The purpose of the event was to help inform and advance the vocal arts at WT. Guest artists, workshop sessions and vocal seminars were held to provide further knowledge on the vocal arts to students and anyone else that participated.

“Vocal Arts Week is basically a week to recognize the vocal arts at WT and to get the word out and possibly receive sponsorship to raise money for our programs,” Sidney Smith, Freshman Music Education major, said. “Vocal Arts Week also gives the opportunity for students to attend things such as master classes that are taught by really experienced guest in the vocal arts field. Having the opportunity to attend things such as a master class showed me personally how I can become a better student and that’s basically what our music program is trying to do; get more people to come in and work with us one on one.”

An opportunity of this sort is something that many students don’t get to experience since many times you usually have to pay and travel for a chance like this, but for three days students could hear and learn from experts from all areas in the vocal arts. The significance of this opportunity is that these experts were students at some point as well.

“We really are interested in educating our students to the full extent possible, but also bringing the public in and helping them learn more, whether they’re interested in singing or whether they want to learn more on how to do it and how to do it well,” Korrina Browning, WT Masters Graduate of Vocal Performance, said.

An end to the event that really gave the School of Music at WT the ability to raise money was a twelve-hour sing-a-thon. The recital began at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex Recital Hall and was meant to raise funds for the school’s vocal fund. The sing-a-thon continued through 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The sing-a-thon gave a chance for students to be able to perform a couple of their own personal classic pieces, and also having the freedom to perform them in a more fun and personal way.