1. Notes for this week

• Mar 20:  We held a great Guest Night, with 6 guests in attendance. 3 more could not attend and we are thinking that they will come visit at a more convenient time. We had 18 members plus our 6 visitors for a total of 24 men singing. It seemed like they felt welcomed, and we are hopeful that they will return next week.
  • Many thanks to our new guests for coming:
    • Mike Carney, Chris Alberti, David Kraay (actually attended on Mar 13 as well), Ray Marcelo, Mike McQueen, and Patrick O'Harrigan.
    • Several of their wives also attended: Nan Alberti, Li Marcelo, and Cheryl McQueen.
  • Thanks to many of our members' wives who attended to help out: Carol Zweighaft, Susan Anderson, Renny Pike, and Lenny Field. Thanks especially to our Board Member-at-Large Andy Fuson who gave the visiting ladies information on the chorus. 
  • Good Afterglow at The Corner Tavern with 7 in attendance.
• Mar 27:  Regular rehearsal at our regular location at our regular time. This is our last rehearsal before our April 3 concert at Springmoor.
• Apr 3 (Monday): Oak City Sound concert at Springmoor in north Raleigh. Look for the chorus instructions from Vern any day now. Show Songset and order, for April 3 and beyond:
  • Bare Necessities
  • Ride the Chariot
  • Yesterday 
  • Here Comes the Sun
  • Almost Like Being in Love
  • Do You Hear the People Sing
  • Over the Rainbow
  • The Longest Time
  • The Lion Sleeps Tonight
  • Sweet Caroline
  • You've Got a Friend in Me

2. Carol's Korner

• Wasn't it great having 6 more voices with us on Monday?? Many thanks to all who invited friends to come. Please encourage them to keep coming! 
• If anything on the SongSet above startles you, that is what you should be working on between now and next Monday! 
• We will add in Desperado and Honesty when we are ready to do that.
• Please take a few minutes to watch the video Ben shared in his Buzz for last week at Somebody to Love.. It's amazing what a listener can understand without being beat over the head by the consonants!
• Please remember to watch the Contest Livestream recording of the chorus contest to see what people in the audience experienced as we performed. Also check out a few more performances for comparison. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/live/pKxHkS3c0e4?feature=share We are on stage at about 50:30.
• We will take some time to talk about this in the business meeting on March 27. Be ready to offer up a few words on what you saw and heard from us and compare it to what you saw and heard from other choruses. We always want to grow, learn, and get better so we can keep loving what we do!
• Build on the idea of singing phrases with the emphasis and inflection you would use if you were speaking. Once that flow starts to become consistent, move on to singing whole paragraphs and ideas. This does not mean that you don't ever replenish your air, but it does mean that you sing in big ideas instead of just trying to get to the next rest in the music. Once you really make this a mental reality, it will start to become a physical reailty as well. Your breaths will become part of your singing and won't interrupt the forward momentum within a song.

3. Ben's Buzz

• From Last week: Following up on Carol’s almost continuous reminders for us to not sing most consonants at the end of words, or to just barely touch them, here’s a great sample - Somebody to love. The song repeats “Find me” over and over and over, as well as the phrase “Somebody to love.” 
  • Notice that whether there’s a short rest after “Find me” or it races directly into another phrase, the “d” is very small, very soft, very short, and often non-existent - yet we know the word and the meaning. It gives the song crispness, rhythm, and energy - with no “D”s! The same is true of the “v” in “to love” - over and over and over again.
• How many songs do we sing that have repeating phrases? Or how many words could we make the ending consonant very short, soft, or non-existent.
• Here’s a challenge - Print a piece of sheet music. Go through the song word by word and put a red line through the end of words that you could drop or sing very softly. Then sing the song that way. How does it sound? Now do the same for another song.
• The Red Line. Maybe that’s a new musical notation! [ed. Doesn't it have to be in Italian?]

4. Future Notes

• Apr 23 (Sunday): Sing National Anthem at UNC Baseball game in Chapel Hill, est. start time 1pm.
• Apr 29 (Saturday): Cary Spring Daze booth AND concert (timing tbd).

5. Long Range

• May 8: Oak City Sound in concert at Templeton Retirement Village. Vern Pike lives there now and is our contact. The Templeton is located at 215 Brightmore Dr, Cary, NC 27518, across Kildaire Farm Rd from WakeMed Cary.
• Monday May 29: Is Memorial Day. Searstone is not available to us. Make suggestions on what would be fun to do.
• June 5: 7:15pm: Concert at Searstone! Please show up at 6:30. 
• July 4: Potential concert at Whispering Pines Retirement Community - OCS had to decline this opportunity. 
• August 4 to 6, 2023. At Clemson University Campus in Clemson, SC. The Carolinas District is now partnering with the Dixie District to run a single Harmony Education Program ("HEP") in the summer for both NSC and DIX districts. This tot fab educational weekend will be held at Clemson University in Clemson, SC. Absolutely top-tier faculty is assembled for this training event. I can personally attest that this is a GREAT weekend of singing education, for individual singers, quartets, entire choruses, and chorus directors. Pencil this weekend into your calendar for now. Over the next couple weeks, we as a chorus will decide if we can attend as a chorus.
• Oct 22, a Sunday afternoon. Oak City Sound in concert at Preston Pointe in Morrisville.

• Another Senior Quartet Wins Gold!
  Never Home 4 quartet competed in the Wake County Senior Games, Performing Arts competition for the second year in a row today.  We won First Place overall and will be representing Wake County in the North Carolina Senior Games this fall.  We will be honored to represent both the county and the Chorus in the NC Senior games. 
• Congratulations to all those that participated in the recent Guest Night: those who worked behind the scenes, the invitors (even if your invitee did not attend), the guests, their wives, our wives, and our director Carol.