ACDA All State Honor Choir Auditions

Wow. What an improvement over last year: we worked HARD, we came ready to play, and we did our very very best. No one left sorry about all the hard work.


The day began with our pomegranate blueberry brain boosting POM drinks, which made for a lot of interesting faces.



And then we marked our cut sets, and practiced in the parking lot, out of the trunk of my car with the keyboard plugged into the adapter in the lighter. Tyler (our wunderkind accompanist) looked really intense as Claire & I held the music down in the 20 mile an hour wind.




Then, we went inside, drank our goo, and got in line to audition. This year, we knew more about what was expected of us, and this year I was allowed to conduct which helped out a lot. We could never have done it without Tyler, and so we give a BIG HATS OFF to Tyler.

To see the rest of the story...click on the slideshow on the sidebar and read the captions...the pictures tell the story the best!!!!

GOOD LUCK GUYS!!! You did a fantastic job, and I am, as ever, very very very proud of all five of you. I hope we have a fighting chance this time.

Mass for Life

We are singing this afternoon at the Mass for Life at St. Richard's. Mass starts at 6:00 PM, and there will be a holy hour before and Benediction following. This is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and there are a lot of activities associated with the church's response. Check out the St. Richard's website (link at the top right of this page) for more information.

Excitement Begins

Looking ahead is quite exciting in the SRYC right now...

• there is an original script for the Murder Dinner Theatre being kept under lock and key and sealed lips as we begin rehearsals this weekend
• there are original songs for the Murder Dinner Theatre piece that are really gonna blow your socks off
• five of our members will audition for the ACDA All State Honor Choir next Saturday, after six MONTHS of work on the six pieces
• we are offering our gifts to God and for St. Richard's to assist with the Mass for Life this Friday
• we will serve at Supper & Substance
• three of our members will sing at the Treble Song Honor Choir performance in February
• we have a Timely Topics presentation on February 28th about Rome (going there, how you can help, how you can join us, what we will sing, how much we can learn and experience, and a brief introduction to the Latin Ordinary)
• then...it's DINNER THEATRE ("Dyin' for a Pint: The O'Brien Pub Murders")
• We sing at the Palm Sunday Vigil Mass
• We sing on Easter Morning at the 8:00AM Mass
• then, hopefully, some of us will be singing at the ACDA Honor Choir in April (St. Cecilia, St. Gregory, pray for us)
• there will be an ALL CHOIRS Mass on the 3rd Sunday of Easter, where the combined force of ALL the children's/Youth choirs will sing together
• and then, our Bead 'N Bake Spring fundraiser
• and as the school year winds down, we will bid our founders a fond farewell as they graduate and head off to college

Pray for your St. Richard Youth Choir...they are going to be busy and exhausted and blessed as we tackle these various difficult and exciting tasks. God Bless us all, and we'll see you AT MASS on Friday!!!!

Mass On January 9th, 2009

The Baptism of Our Lord

We sang at Mass this weekend in the bitter bitter cold (okay, Northerners...eye roll on 3---1, 2, all together now: 3). It was cold for us, though, and we were bundled up in the choir room huddling a bit together for warmth while the heat came on in the choir room.

January is always a tricky time for us. We've put all our effort into Christmas Masses, and are just coming off of the last break we will have until May, and so, with the one rehearsal, we try to remember all we learned last Fall and apply it to the two anthems of the day. Helen has a plan for the Juniors---they sing in Unison a simple song at Offertory and Communion in January...I had a more ambitious plan: sing the challenge piece for the year at Offertory in JANUARY.

That went about as well as it could, under those circumstances.

Here is the video from before Mass for Comfort, Comfort Ye My People, vs. 1 & 2 (which was all we could realistically manage):



At Mass, we were much warmer and there was no more shivering. The psalmist was Claire, and she did a very good job with her psalm she had to learn in six days:

Deanery Meeting Follow up Information

A note to my regular readers...this post is a follow up to a presentation I gave at St. R's about blogging and using social networks for evangelization. I will go back to choir blogging right after this. Thank you for your indulgence. The priests who need this information will also be glad for your patience. Scroll down and you can still find all the usual choir content, and WE'LL SEE YOU AT MASS THIS WEEKEND!!!!

The outline of the presentation in PDF form(click on the "fullscreen" option to see each full slide):

Various Clergy Blogs:

NOTE: I have included a variety of styles of blogs here, and content types. You could use any as a starting point for creating what you would like to do.

http://www.ipadre.net/

http://friarminor.blogspot.com/

http://www.clevelandpriest.blogspot.com/

Homilies Archive: Archbishop Dolan

http://www.bishoploriblog.org/

http://www.fatherschnippel.blogspot.com/

http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/

http://www.catholicpreaching.com/

http://www.clericalreform.blogspot.com/

http://www.frleo.blogspot.com/

http://www.hancaquam.blogspot.com/

http://fatherdennis.blogspot.com/

http://fatherroderick.sqpn.com/

http://laudetdominum.blogspot.com/


http://padrevic.blogspot.com/
http://praiseandbless.blogspot.com/
http://reverendknow-it-all.blogspot.com/
http://reverendknow-it-all.blogspot.com/
http://blog.archny.org/
http://wdtprs.com/blog/
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/
__________________________________
Blogging tools:
Blogger.com
prettiest blogs...wordpress
Live Journal
Drop.io
YouTube
Picasa
Calendar
Stat Counter
__________________________________
Social Networking Tools:
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.plurk.com/
http://www.twitter.com/
http://www.tinypaste.com/
http://www.tinyurl.com/
http://www.tinypic.com/
ping.fm
tweetdeck
______________________________
Broadcasting tools:
http://www.ustream.tv/
sound editing software for podcasting and audio work
http://audioboo.fm/
______________________________________
VERY GOOD PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP YOU AND ARE LEADING THE WAY IN CATHOLIC NEW MEDIA CAN BE FOUND AT:
http://sqpnconnect.ning.com/