2017 Winter Newsletter

President’s Letter
Warm season’s greetings to all! I trust we all had a good Thanksgiving holiday, hopefully enjoying the love and warmth of family and/or friends, and that we could still find plenty to be thankful for in spite of the recent catastrophic fires that affected so many. Even though we drive by various reminders of that disaster nearly every day, I know we’re all committed to rebuilding our lives and communities, and facing the future with courage and optimism. Most of you will be glad to know that our chapter is also interested in moving ahead with our usual activities so that we can help re-create as much normalcy for ourselves and our students as possible. That being said, our next big event is the February 10, 2018 Singing Festival in Warren Auditorium at Sonoma State University. Those of you who attended the General Meeting last August know that a whole new format was excitedly adopted by everyone there. For starters, there’s the new name: Singing Festival. The emphasis will be much more on the joy of singing and gaining experience rather than on winning, although there will be a competitive element in the evening recital at the end of the day. The application forms and guidelines will be noticeably simplified, and the whole day just promises to be more streamlined and rewarding. Mary Beard has a more detailed description of the changes later in the newsletter so ​the character singing their song. She used many of the techniques we had worked with earlier and we got to see them in action in a song as the singers really lived into the point of view they had chosen and brought emotional and psychological depth to the character singing. Although Ms. Landes was gentle and soft spoken, she evoked courage in the singers as they all took risks to go deeper than comfortable as they brought their characters more alive.

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