1st Semester Capstone Choir Concert and After Party
Tonight, the Vanderbilt Choir had our winter concert at the Richland Place retirement center. We performed a brief 30 minute set, consisting of everything from small collaborations with a singer and a couple instrumentals to full choral pieces with 30 singers. Also, because a couple of students in choir are doing the MA5 program through Blair (4 year Bachelor of Mus. + 1 year to earn a Masters in Music Education), they were able to start practicing for their careers as educators/directors by directing a couple of the songs that we sang today. Our conductor gave each one of them the opportunity to find a piece, learn it and then direct every aspect of it in the show. It was a great experience on all parties’ accounts.
It really looked like the audience enjoyed the show. Performing for older folks is always a treat; It warms my heart seeing them so happy when we sing a song that brings back memories of their younger days. Afterwards, a number of the residents personally thanked us for the performance and offered anecdotes of pleasant childhood memories that they were evoked from our performance. In my mind, that constituted a success.
After the concert, our director had the choir head down the street to Cabana for an after party/dinner that was completely covered by Blair! It was great celebrating the end of the semester with everyone – even one of our voice professors showed up to hang out with everyone!
Our choir director has just been a genuinely great guy all semester. In addition to always singing our praises as a choir, he even got a cake personalized for all of us to have tonight. Those personal touches are going to be what I remember long after my career here at Vanderbilt is done.