Looking Back on the April 13^th 2018 Youth Harmony Festival

The Harmonizer’s 10^th Youth Harmony Festival was another great success with amazing energy and great singing and fun for all.

A couple things were different this year, The location was in Arlington at Restoration Anglican Church which was a great space for snacks and breaks, rehearsal spaces and for the evening show; and the other big change was the effort to have it on a Friday.  Honestly it was not as successful as hoped as a way to got more students.  

Another great addition was having Deke Sharon, an avid a cappella spokesperson, there from start to finish.  He offered inputs to the music educators present (they met as a group to swap ideas during the day). He prompted parents at the show to support their young family members who are interested in music and the arts. For sure he added lots of excitement to the student singers. And the Harmonizer members had fun meeting and chatting with him individually.

Associate director Tony Colosimo was dean of the school.  We had two outstanding teaching quartets to help coach, encourage, and sing with the students.  And both performed at the kick off session, sang tags with the students all day, and then did full show sets on the evening show for family and friends.

THE LADIES quartet from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area represented SAI at our festival.  They won the Rising Star Award for 2016 at the competition in New Zealand and are Region 10 champs for SAI.

GIMME FOUR from our own district and the Caldwell NJ area represented the BHS.  They are the 2018 M-AD quartet champs. This was their second time to come help us with our festival.

For the evening show, the Harmonizers started things off with a set of “America,” “Bring Him Home” with Tony as soloist, and “All You Need Is Love” with Clyde Crusenberry and Tony on solos. Director Joe Cerutti did the chorus warm up and directed on the show. This was the first Harmo show for Jerry Jayjohn and Connor Goss.

The youth went wild with applause and standing ovations for the quartets and chorus!  They clapped and cheered and participated with the groups on the show.

The youth attendees sang on the show too and were a huge hit with the crowd of parents, friends and supporting Harmonizers.  Our own Mikey Robertson attended as a student and sang a solo in the men’s chorus.

Lots of Harmonizers worked all day providing support for the event – especially in organizing snacks, lunch and a pizza feed for the students, coaches and educators – including Bob Blair, Rob Barnovsky, Walt Page, Jack Pitzer, Alan Kousen, Casey Belzer, Randy Lazear, Gary Cregan, Dean Sherick and Clyde Crusenberry.

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 70^th year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd