Sisters In A Chord & the Budget

This past Monday night we started the evening Harmony Fusion Rehearsal with a rehearsal performance of Sisters In A Chord. SIAC as I refer to my double quartet are a group of eight women who meet weekly to work on songs separate from the chorus. It gives us the opportunity to improve our singing skills in a smaller setting with the goal being able to perform for more outreach events. On July 7 we are singing at a church talent show in Livermore. Although we practice each week, there is still the "stage fright" to deal with. For some of us it is harder to sing for our riser mates than sing for the public. We sang well and entertained our chorus group. They clapped and cheered in support. While singing in front of people is challenging on a nerve level, it is still awesome to perform! From there we moved on to our Budget. We often have a Show every other year and the opposite year we do a charity fundraiser for a women's shelter. This year we will not have either and will need to do more fundraising and looking for sponsors. We have new music to purchase, coaching, director costs, overhead for rental of the hall, riser set up fees and other odds and ends to pay for. We collect dues from our members, will have several garage sales, a raffle, book sales, farmer's markets, sell holiday greens, likely some other ideas during the year and will seek sponsors and donations. The purpose of the chorus is educational, teaching and sharing the craft of barbershop. We sing at several private and public venues during the holidays and throughout the year. We enjoy those performances and what we look forward to each year is competing against other Sweet Adelines chorus's in our region. For the chorus and quartet in each region that wins first place, they will go on to International Convention to compete. Ours is a singing sport with women members around the world including the US, England, Sweden, Japan and Australia. After the budget was passed with about $4500 to come up with in sponsorships and donations, we moved on to singing. Each woman has fallen in love with the ambiance of singing, competing, having fun learning to sing in the barbershop and a cappella style. It is more than a chorus, we are family. The rest of the night was fun, working on hour new songs and honing our craft. For more information about the chorus, www.harmonyfusion.org