Spreading Christmas Joy and Enjoying ourselves

Chocolate Sunday brought smiles, giggles, cheers and great holiday spirit.  It was my first time appearing in the Fairfield School District with a High School Ensemble.  For me, it was very exciting to direct a group like GYZ again.

Here is a clip of the GYZ groups singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - GYZ Style", "The 12 Days of Christmas" and "Goodnight Sweetheart".  All three songs appeared to be well received.

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On Thursday, December 9th, the Libertyville and Washington Elementary students combined to put on the 2010 Winter Program.  This performance was kind of a ground breaking experience in a couple ways.  First, it was the first time the two schools have combined for a performance like this.  Second, traditionally there have not been many winter concerts.  Instead, there were usually either K-2 or 3-5 Spring programs.  This is the first step in having each student have one concert each year.

After a pretty exhausting rehearsal in the morning that really tired the kids out, we had to all come together for the program that night.  Ask anyone at the rehearsal that morning....it is no small task getting 300 students approximately ages 5 - 9 to work together, fit and sing as one.  However we pulled it off.  Here are some short clips from the groups involved.

One part of the program that I felt was special for several of our students happened to be "The Marvelous Toy".  This has always been a song that I have enjoyed and I think the second grade students enjoyed it also.  One day in class we started talking about the Marvelous Toy and I realized that every student had a different idea of what it looked like.  The ideas was then born to have them draw their ideas and bring them into the program.

With the help of Deb Finey and Alicia Carradus, we accomplished this also.  At each school I had the help some of the associates to take the pictures and get them into the computer.  In fact, the last picture went into the slide show just four hours before the show.  Below is the slideshow that played during the concert in case you wanted to see it again at your leisure.  I have included the accompaniment music, but there are no words in this version.

 

I really wish to thank the students and their parents for a successful program.  The students worked hard to learn a lot of music in a relatively short amount of time.  I have heard many positive comments from many different people.  Remember that the High School Winter Concert is this Thursday in the High School Auditorium.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,

Mr. G