Friday, February 11, 2011

Remembering High School........

Last Tuesday (2/1/11), on our first snow day, when we were all excited about getting to stay home and play, I spent more time on Facebook than I had in a long time, probably since I first opened my FB account. I found several of my high school friends and fellow choir and Chamber Singer members (Madrigals, Show Choir, etc.. whatever your school called it). One of my friends had found an old cassette tape of one of the nights performances and posted them to his profile asking if anyone knew who was singing this and that. It was really fun to listen to our old performances and remember how cool we thought we were and to now see what goobers we all were!!!! Remember this was the 70's people!



I had always been involved with Orchestra and of course sang at church etc.... but only started taking voice lessons the summer after my Junior Yr. At the end of my JR. year, I auditioned for Choir and made it into Choir and Chamber Singers.



It was fun to be apart of such a fun and talented group of people! We sang everywhere went to all the competitions and performed at all the Jr. Highs that fed into our High School, and during the performance sometime, they would always ask, who went to that Jr. High, so when it was Mead Jr. High I raised my hand. After the performance the Jr. High Choir director came up to and said, where were you in Jr. High, because you were not in Choir? I would laugh and say I was in Orchestra!



I sang a Solo in our Christmas Concert my Senior year when the Friends University Music Dept. Head was in the audience and in Kansas if you are a singer and want to be in Music Performance you go to Friends University, it really is a prestigious place to go, He came up and asked me to come and audition for him for a Scholarship to their college.



So even, though I came late to the program.....I did come!!! lol! And when I listen to this recording of the one night, I can only hope it didn't really sound that bad....I hear a couple of sour notes in me and I feel bad, because my partner Lyle Malcom sounds awesome!!! I hope the other night was better!! I think we performed it two nights if I remember correctly, maybe three. College my voice really grew and even though I was a Music Education major, my first Jury freshman year my notes came back that I should be a performance major and that was at BYU, so that really was saying something.



The other thing I remember about this performance is that the Theater Teacher, Bob Washburn watched us practicing in Rehearsals for the opening night, and he asked me, where had I been all through high school, he said he would have loved for me to have been in some of his theatre productions.

I had always been interested in doing theatre, but I had to work, so really Chamber Singers who did have lots of concerts, and orchestra with those performances was really all I could do. But that is why it was important to me to not have my girls work jobs during high school. I wanted them to be able to be apart of all these fine art programs!!! And they were! And there job was helping me at home with Aileen, which I needed respite care for, so it worked out nicely.

Now it sounds like I'm bragging, but these are the memories that came flooding back to me while we were all Facebooking back and forth and digging out old photographs and sharing them with one another! I wouldn't go back to High School. But I can tell you the friends that I have kept contact with and are still friends with are the people I met in Orchestra and Chamber Singers! Someone mentioned we should have a Chamber Singers Reunion.....now that is a reunion I would go to!

Good times!

My Orchestra Teacher who really was my most influential/beloved teacher was Bob Gleason. The Choir teacher was Bob Pellet. I guess if you taught fine arts at East High School your first name had to be Bob, as you might remember from earlier in my post the Theatre Teacher was named Bob Washburn. funny coincidence.

1 comment:

Cathy said...

You sounded and looked beautiful; fun memories.