Looking Back on the March 18, 2025 Alexandria A Cappella Collective Meeting
The AACC ensembles continued working on their music this week, at Beth El. They are both preparing for the Southern Division competition this weekend, March 21-22, in Towson, MD, at the University of MD Kaplan Concert Hall (8000 York Rd.). The quartet contest starts early – 4 pm on Friday afternoon. The chorus contest starts at 9:30 am Saturday morning and the quartet finals round starts at 7 pm.
Metro Voices sings 9th and the Harmonizers sing 12th in the chorus contest.
Here is the singing order for all the quartets with AACC members or former members or family members in them:
Singing first – SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT with Jim Lake
Singing second – MENTAL NOTE with Scott Beach and Mike Geipel
Singing third – BETTER TOGETHER with Elizabeth Colosimo, Heather Havens, Tony Colosimo, and Andrew Havens
Singing fifth – BELTWAY with Rob Santine, Suranjan Sen, Josh Myers, and Ryan Mextorf
Singing sixth – THE ELDERLY BROTHERS with Mike Wallen
Singing eighth – INSTAGRAMPS with Rick Taylor, Jay Butterfield and Steve White
Singing tenth – HARMOHAUS with John Sifuentes, Lance Fisher. Kevin Mendez, and David Breen
Singing thirteenth – FANTASTIC 4 with Chris Susalka and Heidi Brown, daughter of Anne Ermlick
Singing fifteenth – FIRST TAKE with Tony Colosimo and Andrew Havens
Singing nineteenth – HEART AND SOUL with Bob Mattes
Singing twenty third – SUPERNOVA with Tessa Walker and Maggie McAlexander
There is a good body of information about going to the Southern Division contest – a slide set is in the Water Coolerchannel - on Slack. It is especially informative for new members, but even experienced members would benefit from this info.
The two ensembles met separately at the start of this week’s meeting.
For the Harmonizers, Tony Colosimo, associate director, started the warm up, and asked newly appointed assistant director, Jason Lee, to finish the exercises. Tony conducted the rehearsal time as he will be directing the Harmonizer chorus at the Southern Division while artistic director, Joe Cerutti, is on International travel this week.
Tony worked on “Wonderful World” and then on the contest songs – “Toyland” (arranged by Ed Waesche) and “Come Follow the Band” (arranged by Steve Tramack). Zak Sandler helped coach the singers in their performance skills for the songs.
Terry Reynolds, music team admin leader, and Tony facilitated the official riser placements for the Harmonizers before they performed their contest set for Metro Voices. That performance earned a lot of cheering and applause!
Terry reminded members that the call time is 9:30 am at the concert hall – dressed and warmed up ready to sing. It was also stressed that singers should plan to arrive early enough to pick up their convention registration because they must have it before going on stage. The Harmonizers will go into the contest seating area to cheer for Metro Voices, then adjourn themselves to finish their warm up preparation. He also announced that the chapter has been invited to sing on the Saturday night show, and that both ensembles will sing as part of their stage time. That might mean a change in travel plans for those driving up and back on Saturday.
Both Terry and Tony encouraged members to sit in on as much of the contest as they can, and shared that everyone is welcome to stay for the judges chat with the choruses about their judging category. The sessions usually happen right after the contest results are announced.
For Metro Voices, they started Tuesday night using the risers to prepare for their stage time at the contest. Riser positions were created last week when assistant director, Maggie McAlexander, lead a session on identifying timber of the singers’ voices (based on the work the chorus had done with their coach a couple weeks ago). She met with each section of the chorus and had individuals sing, and she then assigned that person an “instrument” label for their sound – strings, woodwinds and brass. Tony assisted in the riser placement plan.
Maggie did warm ups this week and welcomed Cadence Flaherty back from college to sing at the contest with Metro Voices. Director, Samantha Tramack, worked on some fine tuning points for their contest uptune, “World Here I Am” (arranged by Patrick McAlexander). Their ballad will be “After You, Who” (arranged by Carole Prietto). For part of the evening, the chorus also worked on their other repertoire songs.
For sure it was great for Metro Voices to perform the set for their fellow AACC members and celebrate the growth and terrific development of Metro Voices.
Here are other recent announcements that members should know:
(1) The Harmonizers will sing the Honors Flight event on April 26. Members should sign up to confirm their availability.
(2) The Alfred Street Baptist Choir folks have invited the Harmonizers to sing at the tribute event for Dr. Joyce Garrett, Aug. 2 at 5 pm in Fort Washington, MD. She was instrumental in the outreach to have the Harmonizers and the men’s choir at Alfred Street Baptist launch their many years of fellowship and musical celebrations. She was honored by the chapter as recipient of the Harmony Award in 2018.
(3) The March 25 meeting will be at AlexRenew – it will be an education night with a variety of sessions to learn more about barbershop harmony and the chapter.
(4) We will also have some quartets singing in the Northern Division/International prelims contest April 25-26 in New Jersey including LEGACY with Rick Taylor; GQ with Samantha Tramack; and PRATT STREET POWER with Ed Schubel.
(5) The cabaret planned for the evening of the spring2ACTion fundraiser has been cancelled because no venue could be found for the event.
President Craig Kujawa took a minute to explain the chapter’s 50/50 drawing – one half goes to the member with the winning ticket, and the other half goes to the Mid Atlantic District (M-AD) Endowment Fund, per a letter of appreciation from Endowment Fund promoter, Alan Wile. He reports that the chapter’s support of the fund for the year is over $1100.
Craig announced that the next chapter board meeting will be Thursday, March 20, at 7 pm, at AlexRenew. Any member is welcome to attend.
Again this week, Mary Cooper welcomed the guests to the meeting: Patrick Horne, Shira Perlmutter, Leah Bernstein, Holly Perdue, Karen Kouagou, and Nathanial White. She also presented name tags to the two newest members – AJ Gupta and Brigham Blackhurst. Welcome all!
Two of the chapter quartets sang their contest set this week – great job BELTWAY and HARMOHAUS
The evening ended at 10 pm with Jason as director for an especially enthusiastic “Keep the Whole World Singing.” There was no afterglow at Harmo House.
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 76th year of the Alexandria Chapter. - YeEd)
The Chapter Mission Statement: Enriching lives through vocal harmony in the greater DC area.