Friday, March 9, 2012


Looking Back on the March 6th Chapter Meeting

Our meeting this week was at the new T C Williams Hi School – in the Orchestra Room.  Quite  a nice new facility with its own parking garage.  (That is where the old building was that old timers were in for show for many years!)  Thanks to Bob Rhome for his efforts to get us a good alternative meeting place.

We were there since Durant is voting place for Super Tuesday.  And that allowed us to try this new venue for a recording session. Guess we will get a follow up report next week as to how it worked. There seemed to be some hidden background noises that the recording equipment could pick up.

We worked on “Great Day” and “No More Sorrows” to get them down.  Hope it worked.

Scot Kahler with help from Doug White and Mike Kelly were handling the technical stuff for the recording, tho Joe wore headsets for a lot of the time.  He got a laugh when he looked up to see why he could hear bari out of his right ear and the new they were standing on the other side of the risers – then he discovered he had the headsets on backwards!

Joe did a lot of shifting guys around in their quads or sections to avoid single voices and to improvement total performance.

The riser crew did great job moving in and getting them up in a relatively tight space.  Tho the Harmo truck was parked right outside a level entry way.

Between takes on the songs, various admin things were taken care of since we had to be out of the building promptly at 10. Sometimes section leaders came out front to offer suggestions or fixes that were needed.

Membership vp introduced guests John Greene and Bob Griesemer who are now both applicants. Will Cox was back to direct the Harmo welcome song.

NOTE:  the next big special guest nite for the chapter is March 27th.  Start now in getting your candidate for membership lined up, offer him a ride, take him to dinner before the meeting, take off an hour early yourself so you can get there.  If you ride Metro, ask some of us to come get you both.

Secretary Chris Buechler presented Ken Ives his 27-year membership renewal.

Brad Jones reminded all China travelers to get in their payment this week!!

Craig Kujawa urged everyone to get their room reservation in Roanoke for the Southern Division contest May 25 and 26 at Hotel Roanoke &Conf Center.  Call 540-985-5900.  Mention barbershop convention.

Steve White led the cheers for all our guys that are competing this weekend at the M-AD International Quartet Prelims at the Hyatt Reston.  The quartets gotta earn a score of 76 to go to Portland in July.  We may have a bunch of guys from our chapter and for sure a bunch of guys from our district that will get to go.

Our chapter continues a long-standing tradition of giving each quartet a small financial gift to help cover contest registrations based on the number of Harmonizers in the quartet.  The boldfaced names are current members.

Harmonizer Quartets in 2010 M-AD District Prelims Contest

DA CAPO  – Ryan Griffith, Tony Colosimo, Joe Sawyer, Wayne Adams

MAD HATTERS  – Rob Seay, Scott Disney, Rick Taylor, Steve White

MAYHEM  – Matthew Fellows, Neil Dingle, Mike Pinto, Ken White

YOUTH RECLAMATION PROJECT  – Hardman Jones, Mike Wallen, Roger Tarpy, Vic Owen

TOP SHELF  – Brett Thomas, Fred Womer, Jay Butterfield, Andrew Havens

MINT CONDITION  – Bob Rodriguez, Jr., Kevin McKenzie, Drew Fuller, Arthur Louis

As a reminder, the first round of the contest starts at 6:30 Fri. nite. Plan ahead for traffic. There is parking in the Town Center area but often busy on a Fri nite with all the good restaurants there.  Come early and do dinner.  You can get tickets onsite.

Sat am there will be a Youth quartet adjudication at 11 am for 11 contestants. 

Sat afternoon there is a special presentation by fellow barbershopper, Paul Ellinger from the Michigan area, about our personal membership recruitment efforts.  All are welcome.

Then there is a quartet finals round for the top ten from Fri nite and that starts at 7 pm Sat at the hotel again.

There are a number of former member competing, but one, George Azzam, will be there from the Senecaland district to try to qualify in THE GENEVA CONVENTION.  He hopes to see many of the Harmonizer gang.

YeEd found this is BHS email news that came out recently: Looking ahead to our 2013 International Convention in Toronto, Ontario, do you have a passport? Is it current? Do you know you need one to enter Canada? Here's how to avoid the last-minute rush and ensure you have yours in time. Normally you have to make an appointment, but the Department of State Passport Services will open the doors to walk-ins at post offices and clerk's offices on Passport Day, March 10, 2012.

Other news that YeEd can report:  congrats to Rick Savage on his retirement last week after a career in men’s apparel sales.

BHS news is that Masters of Harmony director in CA, Mark Hale, plans to step aside after taking them to do their swan-song appearance in Portland as last year’s chorus champs.  No word on a replacement.  Also word is out about Jim Clancy’s retirement as director of the great Dallas Vocal Majority.  Jeff Oxley is the musical director and Greg Clancy is head of performance or something similar.

Amazing how our chapter members travel so much for work, job and vacation.  Got a text from Ian Poulin who is currently in Honduras for vacation.

Also keep various members of the Harmo family in your thoughts such a Bruce Minnick’s wife, Ginny, who had serious news after a fall recently.

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 at an Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter meeting. —YeEd.)

No comments: