Looking Back on the September 13th Special Rehearsal

(Thanks to Jerry Jayjohn for taking notes for this event. YeEd!)

This special rehearsal took place at the Strathmore Music Hall in Bethesda, MD, and was dedicated to the music for the retirement Gala of outgoing CEO of Strathmore.

We met in the lobby at Strathmore and did warm ups under the direction of Terry Reynolds, and a few run-throughs of the two songs from the “I am Harvey Milk” production from a few years ago. Around 9 pm we were finally called into the music hall to continue our run-through.

When we took our place on the stage, we were joined by members of the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Strathmore Children's Chorus, the YA youth chorus, and a youth trombone chorus.  The guys patiently waited while the director, Rolando Sanz, continued to work with the youth groups.

The chorus did several run-through's of “76 Trombones” with the other musicians and singers to the satisfaction of the director.  At around 9:30 pm the youth musicians were released and the Harmonizer's got their chance to shine. After going over a few changes to the score for the musicians, we ran through "San Francisco", and the director was very pleased.  

The director then ran through "Friday Night in the Castro" after rearranging the soloist's – Frank Fedarko, Clyde Crusenberry, Terry Reynolds, and Connor Goss - to the front of the group, with Randall Ellison and Steve Szyszka close by for their duet later in the tune.  We ran the song but stopped after the Thursday night solo by Connor, for more direction from the director - he wanted to "ham" it up a bit, so Mario Sengco was tasked with calling out "gurrrlllll" and the rest of the guys agreeing with a "mmmhmmm".

We ran this song a couple times before breaking for the evening, with the director saying that we Harmonizers have wowed him again, and that "it's sounds just like it did four years ago."  As we were dismissing, the Executive Director came over and said that she was so excited that we could be a part of this great event, and that definitely picked the right group to sing the final stage appearance of the retiring CEO.

Before leaving we reviewed the call time for Sunday at 12 noon, we are to bring our uniform as there will be a place for the guys to change prior to the performance.

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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