Page 26 - PowerPoint Presentation

Tags and Swipes, Winter 2022

Royal River Chorus

With hope, strength and resilience, Royal River Chorus has continued to persevere through the hard times of
the pandemic. And while doing that, we’ve also enjoyed a lot of fun and festivity the past few months,
masks and all.

Throughout fall and early winter, thanks to Meetup and social sharing, we’ve seen many new guests at our
rehearsals. After a few weeks, we welcomed two new members to our chorus. Both were already Sweet
Adelines who had recently moved to (or back to) Maine, and their beautiful voices now bolster our bass and
baritone sections. Other guests are still in the pipeline and showing an interest in joining us in song
sometime soon.

In our efforts to keep our voices strong and retain a competitive spirit, we set up an exceptional coaching
day with Karen Sweeters, master director of Region 1’s Harmony on the Sound Chorus. As a Certified
Judge in the Expression Category for Sweet Adelines competitions, and with over 35 years as a Sweet
Adeline, Karen has so much to offer. We definitely soaked up as much as we could!

Though a longtime chorus member, our director is fairly new in that role, and Karen graciously worked
closely with her on technique, timing and other director tips. And together, we spent several hours polishing
our competition ballad—making new decisions on breath placement, learning how to keep our energy
through to endings, and use of intentional clarity of resonance and tone in words that might otherwise get
lost in fuzzy pronunciation. We carried the high from that coaching session right on into our Halloween
rehearsal. Dressed up and masked up, we laughed and sang, still practicing what we learned from Karen’s
memorable coaching.

Throughout November, we rehearsed songs from our holiday repertoire. As with many of you, slowly but
surely, those harmonies came back to us, usually after someone asked, “What’s the first word?” In an effort
to help us fundraise while setting the mood for the upcoming holiday season, we decided to have a poinsettia
sale. Partnering with a local nursery, we took orders through a month of social media and email sharing. On
our scheduled delivery night at our rehearsal site, we sorted and handed out the plants, all while singing
through our Christmas repertoire. We’re always trying to find creative new ways to fundraise, especially in
these hard times, and we’d love to hear what some of you are doing that’s working well for your chorus.

Due to so many Covid protocols, we had a much smaller holiday performance schedule. We performed a
lovely show at Bay Square, an assisted living center in Yarmouth. We were all masked and in an adjoining
room, singing through a large open doorway. After a couple of songs, one of the caretakers passed out
handheld jingle bells, and the attendees joined in the merriment, singing and jingling throughout the rest of
the performance.

The following week, we spent an unusually warm and foggy mid-December night caroling around the
Oceanview retirement community. We hold our regular weekly rehearsals in a wonderful event space on the
campus, so thought this would be a great group of people to share our music with. As one member put it, we
were ringing doorbells and chords, calling people out from their evening meal or a few minutes of Jeopardy
to come join us in the spirit of the season. All seemed very appreciative. One gentlemen wondered if we
were a “regular chorus,” as we all sounded really good together.

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North Atlantic Region 1 Sweet Adelines