Looking Back on the April
22nd Youth Harmony Festival
This was the chapter’s 9th
festival and we providing singing opportunity for about 50 students – 20 men and 30 women. The all-day event was at
Durant beginning at 8:30 am. There were
students from seven schools.
Chapter director education Vickie Dennis was organizer for this
year’s festival. Joe Cerutti was dean of the school and brought opening remarks and
welcome to the students, other faculty, guest quartets and school music
educators. Tony Colosimo was
clinician for the men and Hailey Parks
was clinician for the women. Two guest
quartets came to help with the teaching, singing and working with the students:
SIGNATURE from BHS coming up from FL (They have been in our area several times
to help recruit students and music educators for this event and similar
experiences); and CLASS RING from SAI coming from many states in this area
including TN. Carlos Barillo was
choreo instructor for the youth choruses.
Harmonizers helped with set
up on Friday nite and many members brought in snacks, drinks, water, and
dessert goodies for the students. On Saturday morning, more guys helped get
things rolling, brought in ice to cool drinks, helped with registration,
welcomed the students and other guests, and had the coffee on for early morning
break. Members of the Vienna Falls SAI chorus also helped with morning set up
and kick off. Tony did the warm ups after the introductions and the two choruses
worked on their songs for the Saturday nite show.
Just
before dinner and after an exhausting day of hard work on music and choreo, the
student’s energy level was getting low.
What better way to spark instant interest than a spontaneous judging
event. The student body was divided into
three groups, each containing a mix of young men and women. The music teachers attending became the
judges and each group chose a name and decided what tag they had learned during
the day to sing for the contest. The three
groups were vying for a guaranteed place at the front of the dinner buffet
line. The competition was fierce for that prize. After the announcement of the winning group, Joe had one more surprise to up keep up
the interest level. Each group had to
meet one more time and decide three things they would do to improve their
presentation and a spokesperson from each group reported the results to the
audience. After that, it was a race to
get in line for the pizza feed at 6 pm.
During
the dinner hour, Harmonizers began to trickle in, students gathered in the hallways
to sing and go over choreo, and parents and guests arrived and got seated. By 7 pm the hall was filled and buzzing. Joe
Cerutti was emcee for the evening’s show and welcomed the guests by
describing the day’s events and the achievements the youth had made in the
course of the day.
Three
guest quartets sang two songs apiece during the evening show: UP ALL NIGHT (1st
place, region 14 competition, SAI) from Vienna Falls chapter; CLASS RING (5th.
place SAI International); and SIGNATURE (4th. place BHS
International). The quartet
presentations were interspersed with the chorus performances. The Harmonizers sang “Rock My Soul,”
“Summertime,” and “All You Need Is Love.”
The
youth women’s chorus and the youth men’s chorus each sang one song for the show.
The wore their YHF tee shirts for the show. Before inviting the combined youth choruses
to the stage to sing together for the finale, Joe acknowledged all of the people who made the event possible,
especially Vicki Dennis, the
Harmonizer director of education for all her work in organizing the event.
Harmonizers pitched in to clean up and put things away after the
show. (YeEd thanks Tom Berkey for taking notes for this
report).
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 during the 69th year of the
Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd
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