When I first started the chorus we met in my home. I always taught this round in the spring, “Sweet the evening air of May, soft my cheek caressing, Sweet the unseen lilac spray, with its scented blessing.” Out the window I could see lilacs and apple blossoms blooming in the neighbor’s yard, in June. This year I’m seeing the start of the apple blossoms right now, and I can hear this song in my mind.

Sing! is beginning to wrap up our yearly season; we’ll be extending it with a number of additional performances, so keep your eye on the calendar page here and our Facebook page to see what we’re up to.

This has been a remarkable year. I combined Wednesday night’s Sing! 1 and Sing! 2 groups into Sing! 2, a two-hour weekly rehearsal, and just about all of the women from Sing! 1 decided to take the leap. We have worked really hard and it shows. We’ve done a ton of performing, added some new and challenging music, and just overall stepped up our game. I can’t believe the sound we are getting. Take a look at the music page here, I’ll be adding some new videos of recent performances.

This year I added a new Sing! 1 group on Monday nights, designed to be a less intense experience, with less focus on regular attendance and performing. It turned out to be quite a small group. I have really enjoyed working with the women in the Monday night class. It was a little bit of going back to my roots – it is truly challenging to put music together in a small group, it requires each singer to stand on their own. I’m glad I tried this out, and am really happy with the singers who’ve come into the Sing! fold through the Monday night group.

After a year of twice a week rehearsals I’ve decided that schedule is just not sustainable for me. This means that Sing! returns to a single, Wednesday night group. It also marks a small change for us. While our focus remains on enjoyment and openness to new experiences, we’re no longer a casual “come when you can” group. Now we’re a bona fide band with an audience who wants to hear us.

In the early years we did one performance a year, asking our friends and family to join us in our choir room for an end of year “recital.” It’s astounding to me that we have been able to expand so far from that beginning. Here’s a little portrait from our Spring Concert in 2008. More than half of the women in this photo are still singing with us, I’d say we’re now a family of singers.

Spring concert 2008