Friday, December 19, 2014

Family, Meteor Showers, and Community Chorus

Now that the dust has settled after the 40th Annual Groton Community Christmas Chorus, I can't resist writing one more article about it — for a few reasons… For starters, the picture below is one where you can actually see that I sing as a Baritone (back row) in the choir, because it was taken by a man on my team who came to see the "middle" concert — the one on Sunday night.

As strong as ever, about 100 of us from a dozen or more towns around Groton gave our Annual Christmas Gift to the Community — the usual three concerts at the UCC in Groton. And, as always, all 3 performances were to a packed house and the choirs all sang well. The instrumentalists we all fabulous, and as always The Treble Choir stole the show.

This year I felt more a part of the chorus; I think I just put more time and energy into getting to know the people behind the voices. And I was thrilled with how many new — especially younger and new — singers we had. We had a really simple piece for the GCCC men's number, but it was challenging enough because Edie had us sing it in an unusual configuration. The GCCC Women sang "Simple Gifts" and I did capture a video clip of that but only during the dress rehearsal, not the actual performance. Another thing that was different for me was that I got to be part of a quartet of men who joined the Treble choir while they sang "Little Drummer Boy" and we/the men were challenged (believe it or not!) to be the drums using our voices. Likewise, this isn't good video (because of where my camera was) but you get an excellent sense of what the Bell Choir sounded like from where I was.
The Saturday night before the concert we had a most-memorable extended-family bonfire cook-out in our yard. Both of my daughters were home, with their precsious men and several other friends, and we and had a fabulous time. Totally coincidentally, it was one of the peak evenings for shooting stars and we saw the "Geminid Meteor Showers" off and on over a period of about 3 hours. How appropriate it was for us to be watching "sharply bright dashes of light" (spirit!) on this particular evening — going into December 14th — because of the anniversary of a tragic family loss.

For fascinating details about these "Geminid Meteor Showers" you might want to check out this Space.com article and video. Likewise, click here for a selection of my blog articles about singing in the Groton Community Christmas Chorus over the years.

Wow — we were truly blessed on Saturday night, and I am truly blessed to be part of this community!!!