Chorale, as we enter this month of performances, let’s take a few moments to reflect upon what we’ve done up to this point!

Mateo explains his vision for the benefit concert.

A few weeks ago, Mateo Messina graced us with his presence in preparation for his benefit concert for Seattle Children’s Hospital called Lens. One of his guest artists for the performance is Imogen Heap, and guess who’s singing backup for her popular hit Hide and Seek? That’s right: we are! Demoing this song for Mateo was both exhilarating and intimidating. After all, he has quite the reputation: he won a Grammy award for his compositions in Juno, and has coordinated multiple benefit concerts for Seattle Children’s, fifteen to date. One would think it would be a stressful experience to sing for someone who is well-known in the music community, but fortunately it was not. He said we sounded great, and coming from a guy like this, that is quite the compliment. Only a few more days until we sing Hide and Seek along with Imogen Heap at this Friday’s benefit concert! Look forward to a post about that soon.

Spirit Day. Wear ALL the purple and gold.

Shortly after, our director Dr. Wyers went away for a week to speak at a conference. One would expect that when the director’s away, the choir will be at play. Although we did have some fun and celebrated Homecoming week with our first ever Spirit Day, we were also hard at work. Under the guidance of our trusty assistant conductors, we chomped through Randall Thompson’s Peaceable Kingdom and made much needed improvements in the score. Can you believe there are only a few weeks until we perform Thompson’s work with the Sapience Dance Collective?

Welcome to the University of Washington, Olympia High School!

More recently, we exchanged with a choir from Olympia High School. Under the direction of Dan Schwartz, we listened to this choir produce warm tones and rich colors through their music. And in exchange we sang Hide and Seek and a movement from the Peaceable Kingdom. It was a wonderful moment to share music and give high school students a chance to see what a collegiate choir is like. Furthermore, they were certainly a blast to hang out with. We gave them a quick tour of campus, showing everything from the Quad to the Reading Library in the Suzzalo (also known as the Harry Potter room). Hopefully a lot of them want to attend the University of Washington after their experience here—fingers crossed.

Chorale, we’ve come pretty far in the last few weeks. We sound amazing, and we should be excited for these upcoming performances. Let’s show the people what the 2013-2014 Chorale is all about!