Monday, March 15, 2010

Looking Back on the March 12-13, 2020 Quartet Prelims Contest

A good group of Harmonizers went up to Harrisburg, PA, this weekend to cheer for our quartets that were competing for the right to represent M-AD in the International quartet convention in Philly this summer. The contests and meetings and everything for the Prelims weekend were at the Harrisburg Hilton.

‘ROUND MIDNIGHT is the only quartet that qualified to go from our district.

Mike Kelly’s quartet, ENTOURAGE, came in second. The quartet included Justin Oxley from TX, Chad St. John from OH, and former Harmonizer Ron Rogers also from TX. Mike Wallen’s quartet, YOUTH RECLAMATION PROJECT, only sang Friday nite because of a travel conflict, so did not sing in the finals round. They were in it for evaluation by the judging panel. John Reece, who recently auditioned as a Harmonizer, sang in ON THE ROAD and finished seventh.

Joe Sawyer did a great job as MC for the Friday nite contest session. Steve White sang with three other M-AD quartet champ guys as a mic tester quartet for both Friday and Saturday nite quartet rounds.

In addition to the quartet contest first round and finals round during the weekend, there was a chorus festival on Saturday morning and a Youth Quartet contest before lunch on Saturday too. The festival was by invitation for choruses who agreed to "come sing" and then take advantage of a major coaching session with the judges. They were not given scores, but rankings such as good or superior. Dennis Ritchey was MC for this event. (When he introduced the DC chorus, he introduced their director, Bill Colosimo, as Tony’s Dad.) Chuck Harner was a contest administrator for it.

A similar adjudication process was used for the Youth Quartet event. Joe Cerutti and Gary Plaag were two of the judges for this event. Chris Buechler was contest administrator. There were some great young singers.

Alan Wile was present as official BHS board of director representative. Dick Newton attended the House of Delegates meeting on Sunday to represent our chapter. There were frequent references to our June 27th big show with Westminster including reminders by the MCs and a nice ad in the convention program. People would ask you about it when the found out you were from Alexandria.

Sunday’s House of Delegate meeting included a bunch of our guys who are on the district board or are involved in district leadership. This body is like a house of representatives for the district.

Everyone that went up had fun, did some singing and has likely recovered from the time change after a nite of singing! And a weekend of rain!! Believe it or not, YeEd sang a song with three others guys in the lobby. And so did Terry Jordan.

An attendance list of other Harmonizers, not mentioned above, in Harrisburg for the event includes Keith Jones, Sam McFarland, Lew Klinge, Bob Hertz, Ken White, Bob Wachter, Michael Calhoun, Don Dillingham, Chris Yates and Bob Wells. There were also a number of family members and guests from our chapter family.

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 with the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —Ye Ed.)

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