Looking Back on the April 18^th  Harmonizer Youth Harmony Festival

The 2015 Alexandria Harmonizers Youth Festival was a great success.  We had 63 students and 6 music educators participate. 

Our many thanks to the gentlemen of MAYHEM  -  Matt Fellows, Pookie Dingle, Mike Pinto and Ken White, who acted as our teaching quartet for the young men’s chorus.  Pookie also served as the director of the young men’s chorus. They were well received by the students and, as always, their “Unicorn” song was a lesson in how to get enthusiastic audience participation in the evening show.

We also appreciated our female teaching quartet made up of half of SHADES OF JADE and GQ  - Erin Cook, Kasey Cox, Ali Hauger, and Amanda McNutt.  Erin also served as the director of the young women’s chorus. In addition to helping with the young women’s chorus, these ladies found they knew one song in-common, they brought tears to the eyes of some of the audience with their heart-felt delivery of “It Is Well With My Soul”. 

The young men’s chorus (with choreography by Terry Reynolds) performed “Break Up is Hard To Do”.  The young women (with choreography by Erin Cook) performed After You’re Gone.  The combined chorus (with choreography by Joe Cerutti) performed “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better”.  We also had a great young women’s quartet – winner of the local Sing Strong event – AFTERGLOW who performed several songs on the evening show.  

AFTERGLOW participated in the festival as a quartet and was coached during the day activities by Joe.  We also had a great roundtable with our music educators that gave us many ideas for future festivals.  It was great to hear both their enthusiasm for the event and appreciation of the Harmonizers giving their students an opportunity to sing with what was a much larger chorus than they usually do.

Finally there was the great support of TBD who kicked off the evening show with their well-received version of more contemporary a cappella.

Such an event does not happen without the support of many people. Chairman Brad Jones thanked a long list of Harmonizers, FRIENDS IN HARMONY and Durant staff for helping with reservations related to the Durant Center, preparing the hall on Friday night, bringing ice to the Center, helping with signing in students at registration, passing out water bottles and T-shirts, food preparation and service, providing the sound system and audio services, setting up the hall and taking down the risers and chairs at the end of the night these folks all were key contributors to the event:

Bob Rhome

Dean Rust

Jacob George

Alan Wile

Clyde Crusenberry

Dean Rust

Chuck Harner

Randall Eliason

Leland Jones

Keith Jones

Ken Fess

John Smith

Bridgette Cerutti

Lydia Golden

Ellen Dellert

Doug White

Dennis Ritchey

Nick Leiserson

Don Dillingham

Garret Garner

Kris Zinkievich

Bruce Minnick

Gerry Fuller

Cheryl Anne Colton and the Durant Center Staff

TBD members that stayed to help with the riser storage

Terry Reynolds

Todd Ryktarsyk

Elliot Roseman

And the many Harmonizers who came to the show and stayed after to help with cleanup!

 

Congratulations and a big thank you to Brad Jones for providing leadership and coordination for this annual event.  Kudos to Brad.

 

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 during the 67^th year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd.