Evanston Children's Choir

ECC Concert Choir Note for January 24th, 2012  

Happy Tuesday, Concert Choir families!  Rehearsal was downright inspiring today.  The Concert Choir has such an excellent, solid core to build upon, and that’s just what I want to do this semester—build.  Please see the first entry below on that subject, as well as the other items of note to keep you up to speed:

ECC Actively Seeking More Singers—And You Can Help!  Since 2002, the ECC has been steadily growing by 10-15 singers a year.  Our old 2-choir structure had a limit of 100 kids, and we saw the need to change that.  Over the past 2 years the ECC has expanded to our current 4-choir structure with 3 distinct levels, doubling our capacity to accommodate 200 singers.  “How wonderful,” you say!  Yes, that’s all good stuff, but our expansion has created an acute, albeit expected, conundrum: at this point in time we have created (and are paying for) a program with a 200-singer capacity, but we’re only half full.  We are sure to fill up gradually over the years, but I would sure like to see a bigger wave of new singers coming through our doors right now!  To that end we’ve become more aggressive in getting the word out lately, recently sending an extra batch of fliers directly to all the Dist. 65 public schools, and this time also including area private schools and a special message to homeschoolers.  

So, what can you do?  Well, in a world flooded with advertising and other demands for our attention, people often don’t follow up on fliers—or even positive media attention—unless someone they know gives them a nudge and says “Hey, your kid should try this!”  So, please keep talking to other parents about our program, and tell your kids to invite their friends to watch a rehearsal.  If you know of a place that we can promote ourselves that we may not have thought of, or if you think you have a connection whereby you can get us a mention in a weekend church or synagogue bulletin, or if you have any other ideas, please drop me a line.  And fliers still do work to a decent extent, so here is an e-flier that you can forward at will, and I can print hard copies if you can think of a good place where we can distribute them.  Thanks for being ECC ambassadors : )

Music Binders Are Here:  Singers can take these home any time to practice but should do their best to remember to bring them to each rehearsal.  They can also simply leave them in the bin in the rehearsal room for now.  Singers should be mindful that we use the binders regularly in rehearsal and have limited spares.

“O Happy Day” YouTube Link:  We started this song today, and it’s going to bring the house down!  It was written by a serious gospel choir director, but is most famous for being used in the movie Sister Act 2 (from 1993) starring Whoopi Goldberg.  I told the kids I’d send the link.  There is a solo part, and we’re eventually going to choose several alternating soloists (as opposed to just the one boy in the video).  Singers who are interested in doing the solos should especially watch this video to get an idea of how the whole thing goes together.  Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLY7yI1xV-M

Volunteers Needed for Auction Solicitations:  Our successful Holiday Fund Drive was but one of our 2 yearly fundraising endeavors.  The second is our annual March fundraiser, this year called The Warm-Up: A Spring Fair.  Preparations for this heat up in February and it’s a really fun event for the whole family!  One thing the ECC Board of Directors could use help with is soliciting area businesses for silent auction donations.  I can give any volunteers access to the master list of places we intend to solicit via Google Docs online so you can see which places we still need to cover, plus solicitation materials you’d need.  Can you help with this?  Please let me know.  Thanks in advance!

That’s it from the ECC Home Office.  See you on Thursday!

Gary        
(847) 733-0814        
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