Pacific Edge Chorus Updates
Victoria BC - Pacific Edge Chorus realizes that our SAI sisters world-wide will be experiencing a variety of feelings during these serious, tragic times. Know that we all stand together. More than ever, taking a break from reality is crucial to our spirit as we navigate a day to day loop and loss created by our current restrictions, social unrest and media overload that has become part of our norm.
In our corner of the world, from the beginning of lockdown, the tenacity and 'never give up' attitude of our Director Julie Smith did not waver as she spent hours collaborating and learning the attributes of the ZOOM program, so that she could offer continuity to our rehearsals, and yes even our plan for the year - not knowing at the time, if it would ever come to fruition. We are blessed and so grateful for the insight and creativity of Julie, our team leaders and our general membership for adding a variety of fun activities to our at home rehearsals. Without this colorful distraction, that continues to capture our interest, some of us may have fallen off the edge.
Yes, we all missed our annual contest weekend this year with all the love and comradery that flows throughout it. We stayed as close to the norm as we could and celebrated 1st night by tuning into our Regional webcast and taking in some of the activities, clips and interviews. Then, we conducted a Non-Contest event and navigated a compressed contest day a little differently. We gathered in ZOOM on Friday night 'DARTS' (makeup, hair, contest costume, jewelry and pajama bottoms) to sing, peruse old quartet and chorus contest clips, right down to a chorus photo-op. Then we topped it all off with a show of wacky hats and hoisted a glass several times to toast many things – and not the least, our talented Chorus Spirit, Diane Butler.
We dressed in some of our finest on May 12th and signed into ZOOM again to attend our installation ceremonies, chaired by Pat Larre, who delivered a unique process to introduce and install the new board members to office. Then, our ever-impressive President, Fran Errington delivered her creative poetic song as she expressed gratitude and thanks to the departing board members.
Our ZOOM rehearsals have evolved and are starting to feel more realistic than ever. As well as videos and our actual members' vocal warm-ups and techniques, we continue with physical warm-ups. Yes, a choreo team member is right there in front of the camera at home rocking us on. We work through our repertoire each week by singing along with previous recordings. Three new songs have been added, and one resurrected from the 'back-burner' so we are still submitting recordings for review and approval. With our summer gigs and our 'Some Knights' Nov show in mind – the way we look at things is this: The show must go on, whether it be today (2020) or tomorrow (2021) - we're going to be so ready.
Something interesting and different is added to each week's rehearsal to engage us in a fun 'to do' project like 'Show us your pet' or 'Create your personal virtual or home-made ZOOM back-drop'. We're open to just about any form of vocal or visual artistry. A laureate member read us her poem; A member guitarist played and sang for us, and last night we were entertained with an unusual audio clip of a past theatrical quartet who sang of New York and applied vocal skills that blew us away. Upcoming events among others include 'create or make a scarf of chorus colors' - the creative spirit seems to flow in our chorus when we're challenged.
Growth continues as we welcomed a new member into our Lead section recently – then last night we were introduced to a little baby girl, barely a week old, her Lead Mommy is doing very well and looks fabulous. We continue to invite and welcome Guests to visit us in our Zoom meetings from outside and within our sister organization. We had the privilege of Corrina Garriack's attendance one night, all the way in Nova Scotia. She presented a comprehensive sneak peek, complete with choral examples and documents of her judging style, super interesting.
Amidst all the disruption we're thankful that our established fundraisers were not adversely affected without having to venture too far from our homes. Our next step will be to meet somewhere outside safely, as a chorus to finally sing a song or two together. Director Julie and others are all over this and have already canvassed the chorus for approval and ideas – stay tuned.
We have gone through our share of technological pains with the initiation-learning of ZOOM, as most of you are likely familiar with (Flo's funny ZOOM commercials have nothing on our stories). However, we are so proud for proving to ourselves again that there is almost nothing that we can't do; that there is more than one way to operate a chorus and keep us together, and that we are unstoppable – Take that COVID19!!
In Harmony - stay safe, stay calm
Barbara Denbow, Lead
