Mount Vernon Nazarene University will host the 2026 District 10 Ohio Music Education Association Honors Choir Festival on Saturday, Oct. 24, bringing together middle and high school vocalists from 31 schools across central and north-central Ohio.
The participating students come from Ashland, Delaware, Holmes, Knox, Licking, Morrow and Richland counties. Each singer was nominated by their school music director to take part, a selection that recognizes both vocal ability and the work students have put in during the school year so far.
The festival day is built around instruction and rehearsal. Students will spend the day working with guest conductors in separate middle school and high school choirs, learning new repertoire and refining pieces they will perform together for the first time as a combined honors ensemble.
Dr. Dominique Petite will direct the high school choir. Petite is an assistant professor of choral music education at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches music education and choral pedagogy, conducts the Treble Choir and supervises student teachers. She previously taught at Ohio University, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in choral conducting from Louisiana State University, and taught middle and high school music for 14 years before her doctoral studies.
Ann Schertzer will lead the middle school choir. Schertzer is a middle school choir director at Bexley Middle School with three decades of experience, and she also teaches piano, guitar, music technology and beginning orchestra. Before Bexley, she served for 20 years as choral director at Grant Middle School in Marion.
For Delaware County families in particular, the festival is a chance to see local students perform alongside peers from across the district without traveling far. Mount Vernon sits within easy reach of Delaware, Knox and Licking counties, and the university has hosted the District 10 festival in prior years, making its chapel a familiar stage for honors music in the region.
The day culminates in a public concert at 3:30 p.m. in the R.R. Hodges Chapel/Auditorium on the MVNU campus in Mount Vernon. The concert is free and open to the public, giving families, teachers and community members a chance to hear the finished work of a single intensive day of rehearsal.
Organizers say festivals like this one give students a different kind of music education than a regular school week can offer — new conductors, new classmates and a larger choir than most schools can field on their own. Students return to their home programs after Oct. 24, and their directors will carry the repertoire and techniques from the festival back into classrooms across the seven-county district.
Photo: JBTHEMILKER, CC BY-SA