Looking Back on the Sept. 27-28 Trip to Seneca Land District

The Harmonizers traveled to the Seneca Land District (SLD) fall contest and convention in Rochester, NY, Sept. 27-28, 2019, to sing, entertain, share ideas and spread the fun of our hobby.

The SLD was a great host and helped make arrangements for several extra events including a Master Class on Saturday morning, a show with dinner for convention attendees, and finale spot on the Show of Shows on Saturday nite. 

Just over 50 singers made the fun trip (and about 10 other family members) on Friday.  A bus departed from Scottish Rite Temple at 10 am, some guys took flights if they could not get off that early from work.  Some drove in a carpool and several guys took van arranged by the chapter for a few more who couldn’t leave so early.

Director Joe Cerutti took an early flight as he was official representative to the convention for the BHS and attended meetings on Friday and Sunday.

The chorus sang a couple songs at the Chorditorium on Friday nite after we all arrived.

Then the Master Class was at 8:30 am Saturday and a large crowd attended and filled the room.  Associate director Tony Colosimo spoke about pedagogy, Joe spoke about our methods and plans.  Assistant director Terry Reynolds spoke about admin operations for the music program of the chapter.  The session ended with a strong Q&A period.  The chorus demonstrated points the speakers were making and Joe used one of our contest songs for demo.  We opened the class singing “I’m the Music Man.”

The mic tester chorus for the chorus contest on Saturday was a Joe Barbershopper group and several of us sang in it including Joe Cerutti, Stan Quick, Steve White, Dave Welter, Kevin McKenzie, Frank Fedarko, Dennis Ritchey, Jack Cameron, and Jack Pitzer. Pete Frank is a Harmonizer too that lives in SLD and is lead of last year’s SLD quartet champ.  He sang in the mic tester chorus too and was emcee for the chorus contest. 

The Harmonizers sang for score and evaluation in that contest and earned an 87.4% with 53 singers. As a surprise, Joe invited the judges to select the two songs we would sing from the four panels we showed them labeled ballad-uptune-ballad-uptune.   Joe asked the contest administrators to choose and they chose a ballad and an uptune.  Then we uncovered the sign and learned which songs – we sang “We Kiss” and “Blow Gabriel.”  The audience asked to know the other two choices and we let them see “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “Anything Goes.” 

The stage was really small and Joe almost fell off once as he walked amid the mics and speakers!  But as usual, the front row managed in great style.

Alan Lamson and Rasmus Krigstrom were on the panel.

The SLD has an annual buffet on Saturday evening of their convention and we sang a huge part of our fall show at that dinner for their guests. We wore our casual outfits for this show.

Then to wrap up our musical part of the weekend, the chorus changed to their blue contest suits with orange tie and pocket stuffer for the finale of the Show of Shows after the quartet champs were chosen.  We did the “Circle of Life” package with Bob Blair on drums and Tony was featured on this one. We ended  our portion of this event (as our way of saying thanks and to say it was great to make all these new friends) by singing “For Good.” Jon Frank was soloist for this one. 

All weekend the SLC folks went wild with cheers and comments and thanks all around.

Saturday nite ended with a great hospitality room hosted for the Harmonizers by the Mark Twain, NY, Chapter.  Great chow and lots of quartets and tag singing. Some of our more eager tag singers were up til nearly breakfast Sunday ringing chords. 

The bus ride was fun, though 8 hours was a long stretch, (and the candy and snacks left from the dressing room at our fall show helped us pass the time).  Everyone has his phone or other device plugged into the overhead outlets so  it looked like the oxygen masks were down in a plane! We stopped at a Wegmans in Brian Ammerman’s hometown.  Everyone could get about anything they wanted to eat.  On the way home, we stopped there again and this time we sang a song to Brian’s brother who came to meet us.     Brian also filled us in on info about the region like a local tour guide.

We extend thanks to SLD president Dave Bay, and executive vice president Todd Horton, for their efforts to make this all work out so well.  The responded to Joe’s original call with the idea and made it happen. Todd and his wife Kathleen helped make our weekend especially successful.

The chapter also salutes conventions/contest coordinator Craig Kujawa for his terrific work in planning and helping us all participate.

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