Great Fall Forward of 2004!

We arrived on Friday evening and found the sleeping accommodations were excellent, while the singing ones were even more "alive" than the church hall.

After our fearless leader, Rob Mance got all of us to bring our spare blankets to the rehearsal room, the echoes faded considerably.

We spent time Friday singing some repertoire and getting in the swing of things. Rob's facility as a game show host was revealed with his "Chorus Feud."

Loosely based on family feud, Rob divided us into two teams, The Frogs and Johnny On The Spot. The questions came from general barbershop trivia and the survey that Rob had forced everyone to complete, thus baring their deepest secrets for all to see.

We know that Stan Blickerwas a disimpacter (don't ask!), Ron Dawson did weird things with rubber, Bert Brossoit has difficulty with place names and many other interesting things. It was a see-saw battle with the Frogs getting an early lead, the ~~Toilets~~ (oops) Johnny On The Spots catching up, and holding a slim lead till the game was over with the Frogs just behind.

The remainder of the evening, night, early morning was taken up with socialising, singing and imbibing of refreshments.

Saturday morning we had breakfast with eggs, toast, juice, coffee or tea, prunes and that started us off on a long day of singing and refining our two contest songs.

The survey had revealed that Beautiful Dreamer was the overall chorus favourite song, so it isn't too hard to believe that we got into it well, and early.

The day just flew by. Lunch was excellent with pasta and a delicious pork ragout, a salad bar and a bread pudding for dessert. We sang to an appreciative audience of assembled guests and staff. After an hour's free time, we were back at it. This Beautiful Dreamer was awakened from his nap to rush down and join the afternoon's activities.

Mid way through the afternoon, Alan Switzer and his wife Annie joined us to listen for a while, and it was good to have a live audience to perform for. Morgan Lacroix joined us to get the up tune choreography firmly in our heads, so that we can sing and perform without too much effort. The singing seemed to be there from the start, so it was a matter of getting the movements to feel natural. Morgan seemed to have the patience of Job, and by the end of the afternoon we seemed to have most of the actions working with the music.

Dinner was served at 5:00 PM and we were ready for the break. The food was great again. This time we had chicken with a tomato and veggie sauce and fish with green and yellow beans. Everything was delicious. We sang once again for the assembled, and they were just as appreciative the second time.

Our evening was filled with the multitude of talents within the chorus. We had quartets, octets, solos [well almost], guitars and singing until the early hours of Sunday. We also were able to watch the DVD of the Montreal Convention top 5 choruses and quartets, as well as the Finals mic test with Freestyle and friends, and Four Voices with the Voices of Lee singing, All Rise.

I personally enjoyed being able to sing a low B flat, but recognised that I might be in trouble when morning came.

Sunday morning we had breakfast again, but no eggs. There was dry cereal, toast with peanut butter, jam, etc. along with the prunes, etc. There was plenty of food, so no one went hungry.

We got back to work and found that after singing for nine hours plus the day before everyone was singing much lower than usual. We warmed up down to a C!

At a little after 10:00 AM, Murray's wife Mary Phillips and sister Kathy Phillips arrived along with Andy's Christine and little Morgan and we sang our package for them, then more guests arrived in the persons of Ron and Marge Schurman and John Hatfield so we sang for them too. We were in performance mode, but the singing quality suffered as a result of our Saturday Marathon. Since we were finished at 10:30, most of the people didn't stay for lunch.

Many thanks to Stan Blicker, Rob Mance, Morgan Lacroix, Bert Brossoit, Alan Mackenzie and all the others that made Fall Forward 2004 a success.