Benjamin Logan High School sophomore Rylie Thomas has been selected to perform in the 2023 All-Ohio State Fair Youth Choir.
Singers are selected based on their musical ability and experience, their choral director’s recommendation, and the consent of their parent or guardian.
Members of the 2023 Choir will be engaged from Thursday, July 20, through Sunday, Aug. 6.
Rehearsal week takes place July 20-25, and the 2023 Ohio State Fair runs from July 26 through Aug. 6. The choir members live on site at the Ohio Expo Center in Columbus and are housed in the Rhodes Center complex.
Glenville D. Thomas, founder of the All-Ohio State Fair Youth Choir in 1963, led the Youth Choir in concerts for thousands of visitors at the Ohio State Fair, directed them in a number of European tours and took them to several national parades.
Championed by four-term governor James A. Rhodes, the choir has sung for several gubernatorial inaugurations and was proclaimed Ohio’s “Singing Ambassadors of Goodwill” by the state legislature.
More recently, members of the AOSFYC performed during the 2019 and 2023 inaugural festivities for Governor Mike DeWine and at the 2022 Statehouse Holiday Festival and Tree Lighting.
Five days before the opening of the Ohio State Fair, the choir meets at the Ohio Expo Center in Columbus and launches into a rigorous schedule that includes vocal training; sessions on vocal health; part, sectional and full rehearsals; solo auditions; and marching instruction.
Once the fair opens, the Youth Choir sings six to eight concerts a day, marching several miles each day to various performance sites around the 360-acre fairgrounds.
In addition to performing, AOSFYC members enjoy activities, headliner concerts and other special events at the fair, build lifelong friendships in the choir, and develop leadership skills that many choose to take back to the choirs in their own communities.