♫♫♫♫♫ NOTEable Mention ♫♫♫♫♫♫♫ Organizing the Choir – the KEY to our musical success

As anyone who's ever been a member of the Stairwell Carollers knows, rehearsals are as easy as ABC.  Pierre, our director, provides us with our music binder, packed full of glorious pieces, organized alphabetically -- and in concert order.  It includes an index of the pieces and a practice schedule, so that we know what we are to prepare for specific rehearsals. All pieces are copied for our use legally per arrangements with the music publisher.

Our responsibility is to organize ourselves to be ready for every rehearsal.  We have to be prepared; first, we have to work on the piece on our own.  This is FANTASTIC for people like me who doesn’t really read music.  Therefore, our director makes it as easy as possible for us to learn our parts ahead.  He gives us CDs, on which he has recorded the parts separately as simple mp3s.  If you're an alto, you get an alto CD.  If you're a tenor, you get a tenor CD.  And so on.

Obviously, Pierre chooses people to be in the choir on more than the basis of reading music.  Our personalities, our style of voice -- our whole demeanour needs to fit the style of the choir, thus he uses his excellent organizational skills to make it work if the perfect voice is not such a perfect reader.

What?  You don't read music either?  After thirty-something years with this choir, I can decipher the ants on the page (otherwise known as musical notes) roughly – realizing that when the notes climb up the staff, my voice is supposed to go up – and vice versa, but no one's perfect -- especially me.  

Did I mention the choir is really organized? 

Pierre writes lyrics, composes music, creates our webpage from the HTML up -- and formats and posts our You Tube videos; 

Andrea -- our incredible choir committee secretary -- also a fabulous soprano – prepares our music binders, posters, prints program booklets, and keeps track of attendance.

Susan is our treasurer, providing us with detailed reports of cd sales and other monies so we can maximise our charitable contributions.

Rene, our president coordinates all efforts.