Thursday, April 22, 2021

Looking Back on the April 20th 2021 Virtual Chapter Meeting

 Looking Back on the April 20th 2021 Virtual Chapter Meeting

 

For this week’s chapter meeting, the Harmonizers welcomed two special guests and continued solid work on their music and the use of Jamulus.

 

Artistic director Joe Cerutti gave a strong nudge for all members to support Spring2ACTion and especially suggested they seek donors from outside the chapter.  Our goal is $30,000 and we will likely need to work extra hard to reach our goal.  The sectional captains will continue to push their members too. The captains are Doug White for tenors, Noah Van Gilder for leads, Frank Shipp for baritones, and Matt Doniger for basses.

 

We also want to have the most donors during the 3-4 pm power hour on Wed. April 28th – we can win a $500 incentive dollar amount if we win that. The more emails you use, the better. Also don’t forget that for any of your personal donations you can donate in honor or recognition for Sandy Stamps

 

Matching grants: Steve and Jerri White have given the Harmonizers an incredibly generous matching grant of $10,000!  That means that any donation made on either the main page or your section page will be doubled, up to the first $500.  Thank you Steve and Jerri! When that $10,000 match is used up, a second matching grant of $5,000 will kick in, made up of donations from board members and other chapter leaders. Mentioning the matching grants is a great way to encourage donations – people like to think of their money going twice as far.  

 

Finally there will be a social hour at 8 pm on Zoom – all donors and friends are welcome to join in the fun and watch the results as they come in. Watch for details.

 

Joe was very pleased that 22 members submitted self-recordings for “Never Fully Dressed,” “Chorus Line,” and “Help from My Friends.” He actually posted their names and a thank you on the screen. Any others who want to add their recording may do so. Thanks too for the work by the section leaders to prepare the reference tracks. 

 

Terry Reynolds, who manages music team administration, played a virtual chorus of “Never Fully Dressed.” Note that the music team will now use the virtual recordings for those three songs during future Zoom meetings. Thanks also to Joel Golden for his work on this project.

 

Joe invites any chorus member to attend a Jamulus session at 6:40 pm on Tuesday nights.  Respond to associate director Tony Colosimo to get on that part of the call.

 

Our first special guest was Keith Harris who works as a professional singer in the NYC area and is chorus director the Westchester County, NY, Chorus. He provided our warm up session this week and offered several great warm up ideas that guys say are helpful.  Keith shared that he thinks if you have not been using your vocal instrument for four days, you need to make the effort to awaken your voice using some of the techniques he demonstrated.

 

Then it was time to do some singing.  Small groups were assembled by Terry.  New this week was an opportunity for a member to sing any 35-seconds out of any song he wanted. The plan is for singers to give their best not their all when they volunteer. The format continued with one guy in the group singing and the others offering feedback.  Each of the small groups had a monitor from the music team.

 

The sectionals this week worked on the new song we are learning – “Sing.”  But during the sectional break out, the sectional captains for spring2ACTion were free to offer strategies. 

 

The music team used Jamulus again this week and the quartet to demonstrate “Help from MY Friends” was Mike Fasano, Tony, Jacob Broude, and Steve White

 

Communications director Matt Doniger conducted this week’s business session.  Jack Pitzer reported news he’d gotten from Terry Jordan that long-distance member, Darryl Flinn, fell recently and broke his right femur. He was in therapy at Mercy Medical Center in Canton, OH. He is 94. Darryl is a chapter member and was one of our special coaches during the gold medal era. He coined the phrase “Breathless Moments.”  He served as Society president and a period as CEO for the Society. Our thoughts go out to Darryl and his wife Meredith

 

Purchases of shopping bags at the Bailey’s Crossroads Giant earn cash rewards for our chapter. Matt Doniger has the details.

 

Membership chairman Jacob Broudy reminded attendees about the chapter social event for a Poker Night coming up.  And he welcomed guest Bob Courtney, a member of the Santa Fe, NM, Harmonizers.  Bob was visiting his daughter in Alexandria and made the effort to find us on Zoom.

 

Our second special guest was Jeff Fincher, BHS chief development officer. He shared his musical background and spoke about the strengths of the Alexandria Chapter that will help them raise funds.  He encouraged members to use their passion in addressing their efforts “to make the ask” and raise monies for the chapter.

 

He suggested that the person who is asked to make a donation will want to know four things: (1) Why should I invest?, (2) What will my donation dollars be sued for?, (3) Why should I give now?, (3) Why did you ask me?. These thoughts can help all of us prepare to reach out to contacts to donate for Spring2ACTion. Jeff answered a number of questions from chapter members before Joe declared it was time to start the afterglow

 

Our next  Harmonizer Tuesday meeting will be via Zoom again at 7 pm on April 27th, 2021. 

 

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 for the great things going on each week during the 72nd year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. - YeEd)