The University of Guam’s choir the Latte Tones is taking the choir scene on Guam by storm. 

Rhojine Javalana the choir’s president was able to explain what the choir has been doing in order to reform into what the group is now.

In Spring of 2015 the Latte Tones was renamed from University Singers. There were a lot of different names, one being the Native Tongues, but overall it was called University Singers

The choir used to comprise of around 100 people, but as time went on, the director wanted a smaller group Today, it is a group of about 20.

The choir represents the university through-out the island and off island In competition ands festivals. The choir usually gets invited to numerous festivals and recently finished a tour in Thailand and competed in a choir competition. 

They competed in the Jazz and Modern division of the competition and placed in the top-four which was one of the hardest things the choir has ever done. The Latte Tones got a gold rating overall and got number one in their division. 

According to Rhojine,” This was one of the hardest things the choir has ever done.”

The Latte Tones got a gold rating overall and garnered number one in their division.

“If you are a musician you need to experience that scary award feeling especially since so much hard work was put into what you love doing,” Rhojine said. 

“Our professor, one of the main goals as a music student is for you to travel the world and through this program it does give opportunities to travel.”

In 2016 the choir competed in Europe. In, 2018 they performed in Thailand. They hope to travel to the Czech Republic in 2020. They only travel every two years. 

For the future,  the president wants to keep improving the choir overall. we used this platform to become more professional musicians and most of the choir are going to become teachers so we use this platform to gain experience and work with students.

The choir has the goals of striving for choral excellence, providing a platform for singers and lastly, conducting outreach in the community, and representing the island in off-island performances.

The group also has been awarded plaques for performing in the Tumon Bay music Festival. 

They were also one of the top choirs in the International choir festival in Italy, which was rare because they were one of the few choirs selected to start and end the festival. 

During the festival, they were asked to perform two-three times a day for five days which was extremely exhausting for the group, but rewarding. 

In Thailand, they won first in their division and was scored the highest out of all their competitions.

Due to many off island competitions the choir has created so many ties with other choirs across the world. Their sister choir from Switzerland visited Guam to visit them. 

If you are interested in joining the Latte Tones, in the first week of the semester auditions are held on the first Thursday from 2 to 3:20 pm. 

They play a scale and you sing it, they test how good your ear is and see your ability of reading music.