Friday, May 19, 2017

Looking Back on the May 16th Chapter Meeting
This week’s chapter meeting was a solid evening of rehearsal and music work on the risers. Several former members were present to work on the music for the Armed Forces show this coming weekend. Director Joe Cerutti did the warm ups using the National Anthem as a vehicle for the exercise.
Earlier this year, Joe announced that we would be working harder to find more singing opportunities for inactive Harmonizers. So he has invited all inactive Harmonizers to join us this week for the Armed Forces Show, Saturday, May 20th, when we will be presenting our annual Armed Forces Day Show at the Durant Center at 3pm. We will be ending the show with a performance of the “Armed Forces Medley” and “God Bless America.” He invited ALL Harmonizers, including our inactive brethren, to join us on the risers to close the 3 pm show.  Those who were interested and available attended the beginning of Tuesday's rehearsal, where we did warm-up and rehearsed those two songs.

After working on the Armed Forces songs, we worked on the spiritual songs we will do at the GospelFest we are co-hosting on Saturday too.  We are bringing THE FAIRFIELD FOUR to this event and we will sing with them on Saturday at the 11 am show.  Call time is 10 am. We will wear black suite pants and black camp shirt and black shoes. We will also join the Alfred Street Baptist Men’s choir on that show. Bring canned goods to contribute too for ALIVE.
Joe also suggests we might all enjoy coming on Friday nite to hear the quartet and some other groups in the first half GospelFest performance which includes Casey Belzer’s middle school chorus. It starts at 6 pm at Durant.  Tickets at the door are $10.
The last half of the nite we worked at polishing our two contest songs for the Southern Division contest in the Hyatt at Reston Town Center. We sing on Saturday morning. We will wear black suite with black tie and shirt with covered buttons and black shoes. Choreographer Carlos Barillo with assistance from Chuck McKeever reviewed visual plans and Chuck Hunter coached emotional singing for the two songs.
Chapter executive director Terry Reynolds reported that our a capella group, TBD, sang a gig at the Old Dominion Boat Club and represented the chapter.
Terry also reports that the chapter is looking for a new home in the coming months as the city has had to raise their rental rates significantly starting July 1.  Suggestions for places should go to operations team chairman Mike Edison or president Randall Eliason.
President Randall also announced that Dick Hall fell last weekend and broke his left hip.  He is in room 2612 at the University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center.  He has his cell phone with him if you might wish to call him – 301-928-4379.  He is awaiting surgery.
It was good to see Doug White at this week’s meeting who is in town from his post in Korea.
Chapter secretary Chris Buechler presented membership renewal cards to Art Medici for 7 years; Steve Murane for 15 years; Tom Berkey for 20 years; Joe Wagovich for 35 years.  Both Tom and Joe also were presented lapel pins.
Thanks to all those who remember to make a contribution for coffee break!  And to those who bring in goodies to share.
Membership director Rich Hewitt welcomed our guest for this week.
Will Cox won the large 50/50 again this week and has donated much of it back to the chapter. Many thanks. We sang Happy Birthday to him too.

Until next time – editorjack!

(This message is prepared for your review if you were there, for your information if you had to miss, and as a historical record of the great things going on each week during the 69th year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd