Young Singers in Harmony Report Fall 2019
Magic City Chorus – Saskatoon hosts “Harmony Explosion Youth Camp”
Oct 25/26, 2019
8 guys and 13 girls attended. Unfortunately, there was a conflict with a U of S event that took away possible registrants. We thought we avoided the conflict when choosing our date, but then they moved theirs to a different weekend. We will be contacting them before setting up for next year. Yes, I said next year!!! Our committee was thrilled with how everything went.
I had two male music teachers and YWIH alumni and Norma Wallace and myself on the planning committee. Each with their own strength. One of the men also directs a youth chorus that he established 3 years ago and now directs the men’s chorus in Saskatoon. The three members that aren’t part of Magic City are young, enthusiastic and full of ideas. We had three choruses: Girls, Guys, Mixed.
We brought in Robert Ross of London, Ontario as one of the clinicians. He is a Performance Judge for BHS, a mixed quartet medalist and works with youth through the BHS. He is also a close personal friend to one of the guys on the planning committee. I was the other clinician.
We used MCC’s section managers for the event to work with each girls section. MCC took care of all the food arrangements and grant applications. We had t-shirts made and everyone wore them when we performed on the Saturday night show put on by Magic City Chorus.
We used the high school where one of the guys works as a music teacher. Perfect set up. Music Room right behind the theatre; break out/practice rooms attached and staff room (we used it as the dining room) right across the hallway. And lots of space.
Kids were great, had fun and couldn’t get them to leave at the end of the show. Good sign. We have our wrap up meeting on Nov 17 and will look at the evaluations at that time.
We received grants from Marlene Eppy Fund, Sasktel, SIGA (Sask Indian Gaming Assoc), Sing Canada Harmony, Sask Choral Federation, and SAI.
Registration cost $35/person (included music/learning tracks (online), food and a t-shirt) We even showed a minor profit of approx $200. Good seed money for next year.
Cheryl Pearce
Westcoast Harmony Chorus – Young Singers in Harmony 2019
Oct 18/19, 2019
Westcoast has been running workshops for young women since 2004, and we actually ran one in February 2019 with the legendary Joey Minshall directing. We decided that we wanted to run a second workshop AND have a young men’s workshop as well and that we wanted both choruses to perform on our evening show at the Bell Centre, joining Westcoast Harmony, Vita Quartet and our headliners, The Newfangled Four.
We contacted the local barbershop community and Keith Richmond took on directing duties for the men’s chorus, with the help of Allan Pinvidic, Bill Findlay and Doug Walton. Patrick McMath, who teaches musical theatre and drama at Langley Secondary School with me supervised the men’s workshop and taught them choreography.
We invited Lisa-Joy Dubois, director of White Sails Chorus in Kelowna to come to direct the young women’s chorus, and we had our usual Westcoast YWIH staff on hand as well: Rebecca Wright, Lisa Hills, Margaret Schroeder, Gayle Rowden, Linda Wilson and Liz Scott, and caterer extraordinaire Brenda Krenn.
The workshop was an interesting challenge this year, as anyone connected with Westcoast had to leave the workshop on Saturday before noon to get to the theatre for the matinee. This included Westcoast members who were participants in the workshop, so Liz taught the choreography before very much rehearsing had gone on, but it all worked out well in the end, thanks in large part to Danita Braun of White Spruce City chorus in Prince George, who brought four participants to the workshop and took over all the jobs that had to be done after we all left for the theatre.
Both choruses rehearsed at my school, Langley Secondary, beginning with section practices on Friday night when we were also treated to a performance by The Newfangled Four who dropped in to sing a few songs.
Because we received grants from the Marlene Eppy Fund, SAI and from the local Rotary chapter, we were able to keep our registration costs down to $40 a person. We had 16 young men and 49 young women, ages 12 to 25 (or so) and they were a delight. We’re looking forward to next November when we can try this fun thing again.
Patti Thorpe
Hearts of Harmony Chorus – Red Deer Hosts its First Young Women in Harmony Festival!
November 16, 2019
What a day it was! Saturday, November 16th, saw 36 young women, aged 10 to 23, come together in Red Deer for our first-ever Young Women in Harmony Festival. The chorus was thrilled with how the day went.
Patti Thorpe was our clinician for the day. She was ably assisted by Sheryl Brook, director of Hearts of Harmony, as well as members of our music team acting as section leaders for the day. Our participants came from all over Central Alberta, with one young woman traveling from Fernie BC, to join in the fun.
The goal of our day was to share our love of music and barbershop harmony with as many young women as we could. We made the decision early in the planning process that we would host the event no matter how many registrants we received. We knew that marketing would be key to the success of the event and made that a key element of our planning. We brainstormed contacts, sent personal emails to local music teachers, homeschoolers, church groups anywhere we thought we could reach young women. We posted to social media and visited schools. We encouraged members that this was the perfect gift to give to a daughter, granddaughter, niece etc. We talked this event up to friends and coworkers. One of our members teaches music at an elementary school in a surrounding community and invited her grade 5 and 6 a cappella choir members to register. We were excited when we had 10 registrants – and the registrations kept coming in – we ended up with 39 registrations with 3 girls having to pull out at the last minute due to illness. Marketing the event was a team effort by our chorus.
We used our rehearsal venue for the day. It has lots of break out rooms, an auditorium and a kitchen – perfect for the day. Chorus members were all involved throughout the day: donating food; managing meals and snacks for participants; keeping the venue neat and tidy or just stopping by to listen to the joyful sound of young women singing.
The day culminated with the Young Women doing a performance for their fans (aka friends and family). The workshop songs were Shallow (from a Star is Born, arranged by Carole Prietto) and Count on Me (arranged by Joey Minshall). Hearts of Harmony Chorus as well as our quartets also performed at the show.
We were able to keep registration to $40 per participant thanks to the subsidy we received from the region. Initial feedback we have received has been very positive with many of the young women and chorus members asking if we will be doing this again next year. I certainly think we will!
Cathy McDonald
Team Leader, Hearts of Harmony Chorus