Looking Back on the May 16th
Chapter Meeting
This week’s chapter meeting was
a solid evening of rehearsal and music work on the risers. Several former
members were present to work on the music for the Armed Forces show this coming
weekend. Director Joe Cerutti did
the warm ups using the National Anthem as a vehicle for the exercise.
Earlier this year, Joe announced that we would be working
harder to find more singing opportunities for inactive Harmonizers. So he has invited
all inactive Harmonizers to join us this week for the Armed Forces Show, Saturday,
May 20th, when we will be presenting our annual Armed Forces Day Show at the
Durant Center at 3pm. We will be ending the show with a performance of the “Armed
Forces Medley” and “God Bless America.” He invited ALL Harmonizers, including
our inactive brethren, to join us on the risers to close the 3 pm show. Those who were interested and available
attended the beginning of Tuesday's rehearsal, where we did warm-up and
rehearsed those two songs.
After working on the Armed
Forces songs, we worked on the spiritual songs we will do at the GospelFest we
are co-hosting on Saturday too. We are
bringing THE FAIRFIELD FOUR to this event and we will sing with them on
Saturday at the 11 am show. Call time is
10 am. We will wear black suite pants and black camp shirt and black shoes. We
will also join the Alfred Street Baptist Men’s choir on that show. Bring canned
goods to contribute too for ALIVE.
Joe also suggests we might all enjoy coming on Friday nite to hear
the quartet and some other groups in the first half GospelFest performance
which includes Casey Belzer’s middle
school chorus. It starts at 6 pm at Durant.
Tickets at the door are $10.
The last half of the nite we
worked at polishing our two contest songs for the Southern Division contest in
the Hyatt at Reston Town Center. We sing on Saturday morning. We will wear
black suite with black tie and shirt with covered buttons and black shoes. Choreographer
Carlos Barillo with assistance from Chuck McKeever reviewed visual plans
and Chuck Hunter coached emotional
singing for the two songs.
Chapter executive director Terry Reynolds reported that our a
capella group, TBD, sang a gig at the Old Dominion Boat Club and represented
the chapter.
Terry also reports that the chapter is looking for a new home in the
coming months as the city has had to raise their rental rates significantly
starting July 1. Suggestions for places
should go to operations team chairman Mike
Edison or president Randall Eliason.
President Randall also announced that Dick Hall fell last weekend and broke
his left hip. He is in room 2612 at the
University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center. He has his cell phone with him if you might
wish to call him – 301-928-4379. He is
awaiting surgery.
It was good to see Doug White at this week’s meeting who
is in town from his post in Korea.
Chapter secretary Chris Buechler presented membership
renewal cards to Art Medici for 7
years; Steve Murane for 15 years; Tom Berkey for 20 years; Joe Wagovich for 35 years. Both Tom
and Joe also were presented lapel
pins.
Thanks to all those who
remember to make a contribution for coffee break! And to those who bring in goodies to share.
Membership director Rich Hewitt welcomed our guest for this
week.
Will
Cox won the large 50/50 again this week and has donated much of it
back to the chapter. Many thanks. We sang Happy Birthday to him too.
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
