We had a great day at the Great Northern Harmony Workshop with Steve Tramack, Director of the Granite Statesman, and his team of squad leaders and demonstrators. The day started at 8:00 AM and finished at 6:00 PM, after the mini-concert by the participating quartets and choruses.

The Vocal Boot Camp gave us some useful thinks to work on to make us more successful as singers. The key concepts are: Relax, prepare your instrument, breathing is power, supported breath is the actuator for phoenation, the 3 phases of musical tone, and 4 stage technique under conscious control… a whole lot to remember, an implement. The presentation will be available under Members’ Only

Rick Spencer attended the Great Northern Harmony Workshop as his first official function since being named Director of Music Education and Services for the Society, and he came down with larangitis!

Congratulations to Steve Wheaton for arranging a terrific school again this year. There were great instructors, enthusiastic students and a nice facility that served the purpose very well.

Next year the guest teaching quartet will be Metropolis.

It took a few months to get here, but Bob Ebers received an award for outstanding achievement in public relations work for 2005. The award was conferred in July by PROBE (The Association of Public Relations Officers and Bulletin Editors) at the Society International Convention in Salt Lake City.

Congratulations, Bob, on a great job!

NO change in membership since last week. Talk to somebody about barbershop this week! Our target for members this year is for a 7 member NET INCREASE by the end if 2006.

The show is only 13 weeks away! That means we have a bunch of new music to learn, tickets to sell and advertising to sell for the show program. We have budgeted to make a profit on this year’s show – something we haven’t done for the past four years. One way we can do that is to sell enough advertising that we pay for the costs of the show.

It can be done, and there is no time like the present to start. See Murray or Steve! We will be taking orders for tickets at the same time. So, start to talk up our show with your friends and acquaintances. The price of the tickets will be $25.00 CDN or $21.00 US.

The Board of Directors for 2006 wants to make sure we are all pulling in the same direction, and have a growing, happy, competitive Chapter and Chorus.

Most are things we are already doing, and all are intended to help us improve, so if you were away, or haven’t signed yet, ask for a copy.

As part of our Commitment Contract, we have agreed to personally record ourselves on a regular basis. If you are looking for a new recording device, a copy of a great report done for the Heart of Carolina Chorus is available through the Member’s Only web site. It is a PDF file, or an Excel spread sheet.

Alan Kenley has a supplier that has sent us coffee and hot chocolate on consignment. We sell the units at $5.00 each and we make $2.50 per unit for the Chapter. It is good quality coffee and hot chocolate, too! A bunch of members already took some, and If you can, take some to sell at your work, or church, or …

Alan Mackenzie reports that we are registered in the ThinkGreen printer cartridge-recycling program. We should be receiving shipping boxes within two weeks and can get started on this easy fundraiser.

If you want to learn more about the program, you can find a lot of information on their web site ThinkGreen.com

He will be back from vacation on February 22nd and will start collecting cartridges the following Monday. A list of eligible cartridges is available on the web site.

This is free and there is no cost to the Chapter, so a little effort on the part of each of us can reap some good financial gain for the group. There is also promotional material available (posters, etc), so you can advertise our program at work, church, bowling league....you get the picture.

Your goal in all of this is to keep me busy packing and shipping cartridges!

The chapter can benefit from your car repairs, your groceries, your clothes, even lunch and coffee! [Harvey’s and Second Cup]… all you have to do is get the cards to buy at the outlets from FundScrip.

The weekly deadline to order is on Monday and you receive the cards or certificates the next Monday. It is easy to sign up, and now you can also charge the orders to your credit card, although the Chapter only gets half the amount, but it is still better than nothing!