Looking Back on the April 26th 2022 Harmonizer Hybrid Chapter Meeting
This week the Harmonizers were ready to sing their contest up-tune for arranger Kevin Keller, our coach who came to our meeting place this week. A good sized chorus was on the risers and nearly all had self-evaluated to be well prepared based on a scale established by the music committee. It was awesome and Kevin continued to thank the chorus for confirming his ideas for the song.
Artistic director Joe Cerutti was equally pleased with the chorus who proved they had been working on their music, and with the chorus who displayed their skill at accepting Kevin’s suggestions and implementing them immediately.
Joe conducted the warm up session this week before he made a few announcements including an alert that next week the chorus would begin the 7-Step Harmonizer Learning Scale – that means sectionals next week for “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin.”
He was also eager to welcome Terry Jordan to the meeting, Ross Felker who was in town for work from TX, and a good group of men on Zoom. As the night went on, more and more folks arrived and Joe couldn’t help but cheer to see all of the members coming back such as Tim Cash from KY and Andrew Havens. Dennis Ritchey’s Mom, a loyal Harmonizer fan, was also in the hall.
Then it was time to have the chorus present their first run-through of “42nd Street” for Kevin. He thanked the chorus for accepting and performing his arrangement and said, “Let’s have some fun!”
Midpoint in the evening, there was a brief business session conducted by communications director Sam Whiteoak. He gave a plug for guys to consider attending Harmony College East. Secretary David DesPortes presented a 4-year membership renewal card to Ryan Mextorf.
Development director Ken Rub encouraged his fellow chapter members to take action for Spring2ACTion with the note that this event is an “every man in” effort. He played a newly developed video with Joe as the spokesperson and with inserted comments from Jacob Broude, Ben Watsky, Steve White, Randall Eliason and Tessa Walker. The piece was created by Mike Kelly and included the chorus singing at various venues. Here is the link for it - https://youtu.be/B_JLaRLh57c
Ken stressed the need for everyone to promote donations during the power hour of 3-4 pm on Wed. April 27th – we earn a monetary prize if we have the most donors during that hour among the other groups participating in Spring2ACTion. He and Randall also thanked the board and leadership team for their combined matching grant funds for this effort.
NOTE to Looking Back readers from YeEd: if you have not donated to the Harmonizer Spring2ACTion effort yet, here is that https://www.spring2action.org/organizations/alexandria-harmonizers
Then it was back to work with Kevin on his arrangement. Before the night ended, the chorus sang “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” the contest ballad, for him.
During wrap-up moments of the night, it was announced that the chapter had gotten word of the recent death of former bass singer, Doug Abt.
At the afterglow this week, there was birthday cake for the April BirthdayGlow. A large crowd, including a number of birthday guys, made it to Harmo House this week to enjoy chocolate mocha cake, pizza and cold beverages. Of course there was tag singing and many guys got to visit personally with Kevin.
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 for the great things going on each week during the 73rd year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. - YeEd)
