Page 11 - Fall 2020 Tags and Swipes

Tags and Swipes, Fall 2020

Chorus Lines

Boston Skyline Chorus

As with everyone, this world wide pandemic has had a great impact on how Boston Skyline Chorus has maintained our
skills, practice techniques and most important, our comrodire! We have had to adapt and modify since March 2020
but we are in our groove and maintaining things as best we can.

Our platform has moved to weekly meetups on Zoom. Since it is impossible to really sing together (unless on mute),
we have refocused our weekly sessions into Mini Music School! There are a few members who are just unable to join
us due to other commitments of just plain Zoom fatigue, but Maureen Dalton has taken on the task of writing up
weekly synopsis for all of our members to review or catch up on what we have learned that week. Her wit and creative
writing really makes it a pleasure for all to keep up with the happenings in BSC.

Our Director, Wendy Pachter, has gotten very creative in the various ways she can teach us and keep the classes
interactive and engaging. We have done a lot of solfege work and tuning our ears so that we can sing accurately and
consistently on pitch. We watch past performances of choruses, including our own, to review/critique. We use lessons
taught from guests speakers about what the judges are listening for and then we try to identify those in the videos.
Wendy has found some very interesting educational clips to show us such as Singing in the MRI with Tyler Ross and a
vocal masterclass with opera music with Joyce DiDonoto. We still work on past repertoire by singing on mute with
tracks but we also use the benefit of breakout rooms on Zoom to go into our various sections to work on new music.

Just before everything shut down, we were lucky to have Lala Carey come to give us some great marketing tips. Since
we have moved our platform to Zoom, we have had multiple guests visit our Music School to share their expertise with
us. Heidi Zacchera and Karen Sweeters came early on to give us ideas of how to keep our education and connections
going. Di Porsch stopped in to give us some tips on staying connected in Zoom. Corinna Garriock, a judge in the
music category and a tenor of Martini Quartet - talked to us about where we currently are, what goes into choosing
appropriate music and what we need to do to bring our chorus to the next level. Next to visit was Kim Vaughn- sound
judge and vocal coach. She spoke about the sound category and what judges look for when we perform at regional
competitions. Most recently, Karen Sweeters came back and did such a fun activity with us learning about how our
songs tell a story. We broke into groups to come up with a storyline based on the same five songs from our repertoire.

As far as the strength of our chorus, we are still holding strong with all of these changes. We were unable to have our
usual Installation night and Member Appreciation that we usually have in April. Instead, an Interim Management
Team is carrying us through and we had Member Appreciation Night via Zoom. We were able to acknowledge
everyone’s contributions through the past year. We were also able to vote for our Star Performers who are nominated
by secret ballot by the general membership to highlight how they have gone above and beyond to make our chorus
great. These women sparkle and spread their joy to all those around them! This year we honored Lynn Forrest,
Marian McDermott and Louise Melaragni!!

We have been working on new music through our Music School. Our Music Staff is also working very hard. They
made a first pass at a virtual choir that was very impressive for a first go. Now our next goal is to have as many
members as we can participate in our own BSC virtual choir. We keep growing and trying new things to keep each
week engaging and exciting.

Wishing everyone good health and hope that their choruses are also finding creative ways to get through this pandemic.
We hope to one day join in person again and lift our voices high!

In Harmony,
Erin Blanchfield
11

North Atlantic Region 1 Sweet Adelines