Another year...another miracle!

In 1980 I started The Anything Goes Chorus, a community chorus for men and women that was open to anyone who showed up. Over time singers have come and gone, but many have stayed...and for years. As they've kept coming back, their skills have improved and the music I introduce to the group now is more challenging and the level of the singing has developed way beyond where many of the singers started. These days they can sing jazz chords and do some fancy scat sections. They can move together in sync as they perform and also sing in different languages. They can touch people's hearts and move their audiences with the beauty of the sound they create and the emotion they bring to a song. The Anything Goes Chorus is no longer a singing group for just anyone. 

Every year in the spring we put on a 90 minute concert at a major venue in the Bay Area. These are not professional singers by the way, and in a matter of months I teach them all their parts, motivate them to memorize ALL their music, clean up their diction, drill the rhythms till they are precise, work on vocal technique until everyone (mostly) is singing in tune, shape the dynamics so they are fluid, help them to get inside the lyrics until the words feel like their own, add a sprinkling of props and choreography...and on top of that, they learn to do all these things AND have a great time and many of them experience what may be one of the peak moments of their year. Whew! Do you have any idea what a HUGE undertaking that it?

And so, when I tell you that this year was yet another amazingly success show (the 27th Annual Concert) combining the San Francisco and Oakland Choruses to create a group of 40 confident singers performing with obvious glee for an enthusiastic audience of nearly 400---well, I hope you will understand how oh-so-very-pleased-and-proud I am.

Another year...another miracle!

A New Season of Music

And so, I am back directing and teaching all six of my choral groups. Six you say!? Absolutely: The Anything Goes Chorus (one in Oakland and two in San Francisco), Swingshift Singers, Treble Makers and Girlfriendz. Oh yes, and then there's one more: a Master Class in Solo Singing that I offer a few times a year. That actually makes seven then. Every other choral director I mention this to looks at me like I must be out of my mind to take on such a Herculean task. I am, but I love what I do. Working with music and singing every day, and being the guide and cheer leader for singers to find their own voice and fill the planet with harmony---what could be better? Well, perhaps singing in my own performance. But the work I get to do IS indeed a blessing to me.

My own show is coming in October and I will move aside all the needs and questions and concerns and emails of my students to make time for myself and my own voice. Charts to write, lyrics to memorize, melodies to solidify, set lists to prepare, rehearsals to schedule - and then of course charts to rewrite...on and on and on. I can't wait.

I do love singing!