| Golden Memories |
|
Chapters |
| recognition in the Austin and San Marcos newspapers. New
music is introduced and our repertoire begins to grow.
Our audition process begins in May, based on that used by the Vocal Majority. The specter of money rears its ugly head, but our wise and learned Leadership Team handles the problem by creating a voluntary donation program which will carry us until we are legally chartered. Our chapter calendar begins to fill up with rehearsals, leadership team meetings, and scheduled guest nights. Meanwhile, our singing continues to improve! As we continue in our pursuit of excellence, we learn that Jim Casey, renowned coach, will visit us on June 30. Several of our members assist the Austin Chord Rangers during their benefit show for Bob Foley, which raised $3,000 to help Bob and his family. Our second guest night is successful with 20 guests, and the "Learning Tape Four": John Wydra, Eddie Martinez, Kerry Dove and John White (with a lot of help from Craig Timmerman) continue to provide excellent tapes and sheet music. Our repertoire is now six songs and growing. Jim Casey firmly implants "Holy Moly" Into our vocabulary as well as the warm-up segment so ably led by Larry Reavis. In July, our membership grows as more members successfully pass the auditions and we continue to have quality singers as guests. We learn we will visit the Alamo Metro Sweet Adeline Chapter in August and will learn a song to sing with them on two shows in October. Our leadership team also announces we will be part of the evening show at the Division II contest in Seguin on September 10, when we will be presented our license. We are now the Central Texas Corridor Chapter, an officially licensed chapter of the Southwestern District of SPEBSQSA. Our repertoire is now seven songs -plus "Happy Birthday"! Several of our members volunteered in August to assist the New Braunfels Chapter in hosting the Division II Contest on September 10: Jan Scofield, Randy Fly, Chuck Walts, Steve Keiss, Larry Clemons, Sam Tweedy, John Lovitt, Craig Timmerman, Matthew Olguin, Glenn Nellist and Charlie Alvarez. There is talk of our being "mike testers" for the Small Chorus Contest on October 22 in Tulsa. SPEBSQSA Executive Director Joe Liles sends us an enthusiastic welcome and we meet with the Alamo Metro Chapter. They give us standing ovations; we get goosebumps; we sing "And So To Sleep Again" with them; we get more goosebumps; they sing for us; we get goosebumps on top of goosebumps. (Can we ever be as good as they are?). Our dues structure is set and our slate of officers for 1995-96 is set for election on September 29. |
We schedule another guest night for Sept. 8 and our
schedule firms up with our appearance at
the Division Contest on Sept.10, two shows with the Alamo Metro Chapter on Oct. 7 in San Antonio and Oct.15 in Austin. Eight guests attend guest night and three become members! Our ilrst "public appearance" at the division contest is a "wow" with 28 on stage sounding like 60! Another standing ovation! And we receive our license, so we're on our way! We hold our elections and all newly elected officers attend COTS on Nov. 19-20 in Grapevine! We begin learning "Poor Lonesome Cowboy" for our Nov. 12 show with Longhorn Singers of The University of Texas. By October, we have a nine-song repertoire and we perform with the Alamo Metro Chapter on the 7th and 15th. We are greeted most enthusiastically by the audiences (would you believe "crouching" ovations?) and we have grown to 37 members who will be on our Charter. We travel to Tulsa and appear as "mike testers" in our brand new performance shirts! Another standing ovation! We are scored along with the contestants and had we been "legal", we would have placed fourth with a total score of 817! Several SWD VIP's tell us we are a new "VM" a'borning! Our president, Sam Tweedy, presents us with "Charter Member" Tshirts, which we wear proudly throughout the weekend! We celebrate with a "Charter Party" at Peg and Larry Clemons on Nov. 4, and create a new presentation, in which we pass Maestro Martinez back through the chorus. Larry says it won't work in contest. He calls it "chorus woodshedding", but we still have a lot of fun! We perform with the Longhorn Singers in Bates Hall and receive an outstanding reception. The Longhorn Singers director, Morris Stevens, positively glows as he directs the combined group in "Poor Lonesome Cowboy" and the audience loves it! We obtaih a tape of our performance and it is awesome! What a sound out of only 28 singers during our two numbers! Eleven of our members attend COTS, undoubtedly the best chapter representation in the SWD! A big highlight for eight of us is the trip up and back in Mike Cain's Suburban. It was a navigational adventure, among other things. We played the tape from the Longhorn Singers show for many of the SWD VIP's and they were quite impressed. In December 1994, our busy performance schedule continues with a Dec. 3 performance at "Sights and Sounds of Christmas" in San Marcos, accompanied by a train. We are "featured performers" for Dr. Johnson on the Southwest Texas State Christmas Show Dec. 4. Both performances were punctuated by some "glitches" in logistics, etc., but we have heard that we still did an outstanding job on our Christmas music, as well as our repertoire songs. |
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Contents |
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How It All Began Chapters Chapter Histories International Quartet Champions ChorusesAdministration
Contests and Conventions Registered Quartets Publications Recognitions In Conclusion