Page 18 - Fall 2022 Tags and Swipes

Tags and Swipes, Fall 2022

Island Grove Chorus

THE BEAT GOES ON! Summertime with Island Grove chorus has been both challenging and full of fun. Our
rehearsals moved to a cooler hall at St John’s Episcopal Church in Holbrook until September. Then we ramped
up our fundraiser of donations of clothes and small items to Savers, filling up an entire small UHAUL truck,
and making a wonderfully large contribution to our depleted treasury. We, and especially our Treasurer, Mary
O’Loughlin, can all breathe a little easier now.

We are blessed to have 2 new members and 1 prospective member which always lifts our spirits. We
unfortunately did lose one important member, our new director, Yufen Yen, who left July19th to pursue a
fulltime job as music educator at a private school in Boston. It was nice having her for 6 months, and we were
very happy that she still went to IES because she wanted to learn more about the Barbershop genre. And so
former director, Pat Hoitt, is again “Interim Director”, until that new exciting person who can’t wait to be a
chorus director walks through our doors. Maybe that could be you??

A few other interesting things we did were to give out our LAURA GOTTRON AWARD , which is in honor of
Laura, who was a bass in IGC and a great ambassador for us and all of Region 1. This year’s winner was
Maureen McCarthy, who does many supporting and selfless things for our chorus. We also give out a
FRIENDSHIP BALL every year. This was given from Pat Hoitt to Mary Stagno, who has been a wonderful
friend in so many ways both to Pat and all of the members. And during one rehearsal we were treated by our
Make-Up Team to a hands on lesson in putting on our new color schemed eye make-up!

We took 2 weeks off, and then during the 4 remaining weeks of summer rehearsals, our plan is to have each
section be in charge of creating a little fun. They do physical warmups and 3 vocal warmups, and have some
kind of a simple theme and goodies for break time. So far the Baritones had baritone Blue night. We all wore a
blue shirt. Physicals and vocals all had something to do with “the blues”, and lots of fruit and cookies were
served at break. When the Basses had Salsa night. We wore “salsa” colored shirts, had red roses in our hair,
learned to dance the Salsa, learned some Spanish in the vocals, and then were treated to individual chips and
salsa cups. We can’t wait to find out what the Tenors and Leads have up their sleeves for our last 2 rehearsals.

We are doing lots of reviewing songs and
learning of new songs for our upcoming
Fall performances, and are getting our
Holiday music together for the holiday
season which will be upon us soon. With
our new website, members can easily go
on and listen to the recordings while
practicing.

IGC is looking forward to seeing everyone
at the Colors of Harmony. It’s been so
long since we’ve been together in person ,
singing and having so much fun! We
thank all those who have worked so hard
to make this harmony filled weekend
happen for our barbershop world!

Pat Hoitt
18

North Atlantic Region 1 Sweet Adelines