Friday, April 30, 2021

Looking Back on the April 27th 2021 Virtual Chapter Meeting

 Looking Back on the April 27th 2021 Virtual Chapter Meeting

 

This week’s chapter meeting fell on the eve of our major annual fund raising event, Spring2ACTion.   There were lots of ideas shared for making it another success and lots of jabs among the four sections about which section would win the prize this year.  Attendance on this week’s call reached over 60 also – good to see Walt Page and John Santora on the call.

 

Artistic director Joe Cerutti gave a strong nudge for all members to support Spring2ACTion and especially suggested members 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.

 

The endorsement of the Harmonizers on YouTube from Deke Sharon was a win! Joe also created a really appealing YouTube “ask” that guys can use to reach others.  Chapter coordinator, Randall Eliason, asked every member to contact 20 other non-Harmonizers asking for support. He also thanked Mike Kelly for his help in creating the chapter’s donation page for this event.

 

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

 

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. 

 

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. (This Zoom event is not on the usual Zoom call number.  Wednesday night’s Zoom call is at 93398328566.) Acknowledgements to donors gives them the link to the Zoom call also.

 

Joe was very pleased to announce that the chorus will be getting another new song soon – this one titled “Sing” (not “Sing a Song”) made popular by Pentatonix. 

 

The music team has implemented a monthly survey to take a regular "pulse" of how they are and are not meeting the needs of the performing chorus.  They want to make sure they hear from those members who have been inactive during COVID as well as those participating in virtual rehearsals.   If you are a member of the performing chorus, please take this short survey.   Harmonizer Monthly Pulse Survey

 

Associate director Tony Colosimo presented a warm up session for this week.  He referred to some of the useful points made by Keith Harris in last week’s warm up.  And Tony stressed good body alignment even in a seated position.

 

Work continued this week in our chapter’s experiment using Jamulus and was used on “Chorus Line Medley.”  This week Joe and Tony asked the quartet to lead the way and sing the song all the way from top to bottom.  The quartet this week was Rick Savage, tenor; Will Cox, lead; Tony, baritone, and Turner Arndt, bass. Guys with Jamulus capabilities are invited to a special 6:40 pm pre-meeting session each week to make sure all users are set up to go. Some of them are added to the quartet for these sessions. Members on Zoom were encouraged to sing along too.

 

Tony and Joe also worked with the singers on “Never Fully Dressed” with an emphasis on smoothing out the delivery of the music.  They played the combined virtual chorus recording made recently of that song (work done by Joel Golden to combine the recordings of chorus members) so members could understand Joe’s point.

 

Communications director Matt Doniger conducted this week’s business session.  President Stan Quick announced an addition to the Harmonizer family – new daughter Coralie May, born on 4/20 for parents Reed and Leigh Livergood and big sister Caitlin.

 

Stan also reported on the work being done by our chapter’s committee that is studying when and how to resume in-person meetings.  The committee includes Jason Lee as chairman, Randall Eliason, Steve White, Frank Shipp, Bruce Roehm, Chris Huber and Stan.  They met with other major chapters in BHS  and then discussed ideas for the Harmonizers.  Our committee sees good news on the horizon.  

 

In other news, Tony served on the team for a virtual Harmony College in the Rocky Mountain District of BHS last weekend.  He was joined by some of our coaches like Kevin Keller, Sean Devine and Steve Tramack

 

Membership chairman Jacob Broude reports that new names tags ordered for new members have arrived and he will mail them to those folks.

 

The sectionals this week worked on “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin” and this time a singer from another part joined the sectional for duetting. Kevin McKenzie sang with the tenors; Tuner sang with the leads; Tony sang with the baritones; and Frank Fedarko sang with the basses. The music team announced that a revised annotated version of that song was released just hours before the meeting started.

 

Following the sectional singing, the captains for Spring2ACTion used a few minutes to encourage their guys to promote the fund raiser. 

 

Wrap up for this week was an elective presented by Phil Ashford – “Living Large in a Tiny House.” Phil and his wifeKaren now live in FL with their new home.  There was a lot of interest in this special topic.  Phil says the houses may be small but they are also expensive.  He shared how he developed their home and how they managed to relocate to a tiny house community in FL. He shared the technology that was used to build the home that is 374 sq. feet; 8/5 ft. wide; 13.5 ft. tall; 26 ft. long.  Phil’s house is unique in that it opens out a few feet on each of the long sides.  The Ashfords are also spokes persons for the new trend of tiny homes.

 

Joe concluded that other members are welcomed to do an elective for 30 or so minutes in the weeks ahead. Let Joe or Terry know you can step up and do one – cooking ideas, gardening suggestions, your favorite vacation, game night with friends, coping with downsizing, favorite tags and who you sang them with. 

 

Our next  Harmonizer Tuesday meeting will be via Zoom again at 7 pm on May 4th, 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)