Time For A Breather

The Holiday Rush is Over

Well, we got through another year's Christmas/Holiday season. In the month of December, I performed in two concerts with the Delaware Valley Choral Society, and four performances with the High Point Harmonizers. The Harmonizers had to cancel one of their gigs due to bad weather. Now we get to relax for a couple of weeks.

It's always a treat to do these jobs because of the happy audiences we get at this time of the year. They want to hear the old carols and Christmas songs, and we're happy to oblige. Though one of the places the Harmonizers sang we were just background music for people picking out toys for their kids.

That was at Project Self-Sufficiency. This is a terrific organization over in New Jersey that helps people, mostly single mothers, get on their feet so they can take care of their families without further assistance from anyone else. What better service could an organization provide? The occasion for us singing was kind of a "free store" where there were thousands of donated, new toys that qualifying families could come in and pick out for their children. There was a limit on how many toys they could take for each child, but it was a pretty generous limit - five toys per child, if I remember correctly. So we were far from the main event on this occasion. I think the only people who really took note of what we were doing were members of the Project staff. Still, we added to the holiday atmosphere, and that's what we had been invited to do.

After Project Self-Sufficiency, several of us went over to the Hampton Diner to have a bite. As we usually do, we sang a few songs before we left. We got a nice round of applause for each number from the other people eating in that particular room. For whatever reason, we always seem to sound really good in a diner or restaurant. Maybe it has to do with being more relaxed or something.

The Next Rush Begins Soon

I'll need to rest pretty quickly, it seems. Now that the holiday season is over, I get to put away all of the barbershop Christmas music, but I have to learn O Canada and have it memorized cold by January 6. Then I get to turn in all of my Delaware Valley music, but I have already received the music for the Spring concert, and we'll start working on that seriously on January 4.

While we are fairly far north in the USA, we never perform in Canada, so it does seem a little strange that we need to know their national anthem. The reason is that the Harmonizers have an opportunity to do a show at a minor league baseball park. This will be a paying gig, I believe, and will be wonderful publicity. The one basic requirement is that we be prepared to sing the national anthems of both the USA and Canada, as it's an international league. We will have to submit an audition video by January 15, so this has to come together Right Now.

The stuff for the Delaware Valley chorus looks seriously intimidating.The biggest, and baddest, piece of it is the "Mass in A-Flat Major" by Franz Schubert. I don't know how long it's supposed to run, but it looks like a solid half hour of singing, and none of it simple.

I'd better get busy.