The Old Songs

June 26, 2005 The Fifth Third Ballpark (don't that suck for the name of a baseball park?:) averaging 5,000 spectators, home of our local minor league baseball team the West Michigan Whitecaps playing the Lancing Lugnuts. Grand Rapids, Michigan.


The Great Lakes Chorus had the pleasure of singing on the front steps of the baseball stadium to a captive audience... in line to meet Sesame Street characters:) It was a beautiful sunny day but very hot (the picture above was actually from a month before). We also had the HONOR of singing from home plate our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. I could feel my chest puff with pride as I belted out those lyrics and I think we were all ginning when we finished and the crowd let out a cheer. I was walking on air when we passed the Whitecaps dugout and players shouted out their approval. AND we won 7 to 6 in extra innings:) Continued below...

Here is a tight shot of some of the GLC on home plate singing The Star-Spangled Banner. Everyone else is turned facing the flag in the upper left corner (I'm the half a face on the left edge:). The audio clip is below.

GLC The Star-Spangled Banner


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CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE. Here we are beside the front steps of Fifth Third (I'm the forehead in the middle left:) Below are audio clips of what we sang from there.

GLC You're A Grand Old Flag

GLC God Bless America

GLC I'm Sitting On Top Of The World

GLC California Here I come

GLC Ain't Misbehavin'

(photos only, no audio clips this article)

(click photo to enlarge) June 10, 2005 The Capitol City Chordsmen and Great Lakes Chorus bus trip from Lansing, Michigan.

This is the international send off show/glo, a fund raising dinner sponsoring our Pioneer District international competitors and hosted by the Windsor Chapter at the Hellenic Hall in Windsor Ontario Canada.

The Capitol City Chordsmen Lansing Chapter http://www.harmonize.com/CapitolCityChordsmen/index.htm

...had chartered a bus and were kind enough to invite our...

Great Lakes Chorus Grand Rapids Chapter
http://www.greatlakeschorus.com/

...to ride for free. This way the only expense for us was the $16.50 pasta dinner (and the bar of course:). We car pooled to catch the bus at a Lansing Meijers store's parking lot where we met the Lansing Chapter. Then the bus made a stop I think in Jackson to pick up another group (Jackson Chapter?) and then headed for the Michigan USA / Ontario Canada boarder in Detroit. The boarder is only a couple hours away but I have only crossed it twice so it's a strange mundane thrill, like waiting for the odometer to break 100,000:) The boarder guard (a girl in this case) was rather stoic, even when the bus sang the barbershop rendition of O Canada:)

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(click photo to enlarge) My car pool driver Rev. Ralph Mueller and I chatted on the bus with the Lansing coed quartet Sidekicks (517-347-6153) so the 6 of us found a table together at the banquet hall. I'm on the far left (Michael Baribeau) beside the Lansing director Jessica Thompson then there's Brain Dunkel, Ralph, Teresa Fuller, and Mike Hanson.

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(click photo to enlarge) A number of choruses sang at the dinner including our combined CCC and GLC chorus. Both choruses knew Basin Street Blues and Love Letters but had never sung them together so here we've snuck off to a backroom of the banquet hall for a run through.

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The Hellenic Hall is a huge banquet hall, this photo doesn't even cover half of the room. Many wonderful groups sang including a mass chorus where many of us piled onto the risers (around 350) and sang several standards to rotating directors. It was so crowded I could only see the head in front of me so had to fudge a bit. It was a great time!

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Wildcard
http://www.wildcardquartet.com/home.html

Here's one of our quartets, the 2004 Pioneer District champs Wildcard which consists of both of the GLC's co-directors left baritone Curt Struyk and middle lead Dave Miller, plus in back tenor Peter Westers and far right bass James Masalskis. We had a fun afterglow on the bus trip home singing and learning tags all the way back to Lansing well into the am.

District champs Wildcard wooing the audience for the March 2005 Spaghetti Dinner at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church, Cascade Michigan.

We chowed down on spaghetti and garlic bread with our audience and then I sang with The Grand Rapids Great Lakes Chorus. Plus the quartet Wildcard and a female quartet from the Sweet Adelines sang. It was a fund raiser for the chorus so I called up family or hit them up at functions. I filled several seats with family including my dad, mom, step dad, my estranged wife and her boyfriend... yeah, I know.
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