FHS Choral Boosters

Minutes of March 10 Meeting:

Calendar

April 10 – ACDA State Choral Festival, Belmont Heights Baptist Church, Nashville.  Chamber and Concert Choirs will be participating.  Singers will need to wear their concert dress.  Permission slips will be sent home.  Please send in $5 to help cover the cost of the registration fee and bus fare with the signed permission slip.

April 16-19 – All-State.  Taylor Florian and Carrie Walker will be participating in the All-State Chorus!  Their concerts will be Saturday afternoon, April 19, in the Schermerhorn Center.

April 21-25 - Build/Paint Set for "Franktown!"  from 3-8 p.m. at the Peterson's house.

April 22 – Chamber Choir Auditions after school. Students auditioning will need to sing Sicut Cervus by Palestrina.  Music and CD’s of each part are now available in the chorus room.

April 29 & 30 – After School rehearsals for Dinner Theatre performance.  This is REQUIRED for all chorus students!  Please make arrangements for students to stay after school.

May 1 - “Franktown” Dinner Theatre.  This will also be the night that we recognize our seniors.

CD Recording

We will finalize the CD in the next month.  We will be sending home forms (and putting them on the website) for you to order LOTS of CD’s for your friends and family! 

End of School Outing

We are planning a Laser Quest Lock-In to celebrate the end of a great year in chorus.  The Lock In will be held at Laser Quest in Nashville from 11:45 pm – 6:30-7am. on May 2. We will meet at 10:00 p.m. in the FHS parking lot and convoy to Laser Quest.   The cost will be $30.  We can bring in whatever food and drink we want, or we can order pizza from their delivery place at $7.99 per pizza or 3 for $21.

Next meeting:  Monday, April 14 at 6:30 p.m.

Minutes of February 7 Meeting:

Calendar

Friday, Feb. 15 – FORTE performs at the Jimmy Gentry Film Premiere. Students should be at 4^th Avenue Church of Christ no later than 5:30 p.m. for sound check.  We will be singing on the outside steps.  I will need parental help in transporting and setting up the sound system for this event!

Thursday, Feb. 21 – Chamber Choir and Forte sing on Freedom Middle School pre-festival concert.  Concert dress, meet at FMS at 6:45.  Should be finished by 7:30. 

Monday, Feb. 25 – Pre-festival concert  recording session!  Concert Choir and Chamber Choir will present their festival music in concert at the First Presbyterian Church in Franklin (corner of Mack Hatcher and Franklin Road).  Students should wear concert dress and be at the church at 6:00 p.m.  The concert will begin at 7:00 p.m.  This concert will also be a recording session for our professionally produced CD!   

Thursday, Feb. 28 – Trip to Choral Festival in Murfreesboro.  CHAPERONES ARE NEEDED FOR THIS TRIP.  Please email Mrs. Jones if you are available to help.  We will be leaving the school mid-morning and returning around 2:45 or 3:00 p.m.  Students will need transportation home from school if they normally ride the bus, as we will not make it back in time for them to catch the bus in the afternoon.

March 11 – FORTE performs at FHS Arts Night.  This will also be a recording session for our CD.

May 1 (and possibly 2) Dinner Concert – Committees are forming to work on this fun event!  Please contact Toni Peterson if you can help with tickets, coordinating the food (the Culinary Arts classes are making the food), helping with the set, clean-up, tear-down, etc!  We will need LOTS of folks to help us with this!  Please join in the fun!  A committee will be meeting on February 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hot Spot Coffee Shop to begin planning for this event.  Please join us if you would like to get involved.

End of the year Social Event:

Lock-in at Laser Quest?  Swim party? Other ideas?   We will investigate the possibilities of a grand social event for the chorus. If you would like to volunteer to coordinate this effort, please contact Toni Peterson. 

CD Recording:

We are going to have a  professionally-recorded CD made that will be available for sale.  The price will probably be around $15 (give or take!) per CD.  We will take orders to see how many we should order for sure, and then add to that number if we need to.  These will be ready for sale for our May 1 Dinner Concert.  They will make GREAT stocking stuffers!! 

Plans for Next Year:

Scheduling changes for Concert Choir – Men’s & Women’s Choruses that will also combine for a massive mixed chorus for concerts & festival performances.   

Chamber Choir auditions in April.  Date TBA.

 FHS Chorus Budget:  Here is a breakdown of the expenses for this year's choral program.  Please know that we do not receive ANY funding from the district to run the program.  Everything that we get comes from your fee money and fundraising! 

Proposed  trip – Spring 2009:

We will submit audition material to the Field Studies program in hopes of participating in the National Youth Chorus at Carnegie Hall.  www.fscnewyork.com.  We cannot submit this for school board approval until July, but we CAN begin to fundraise for it!  Please submit fundraising ideas to Toni Peterson.   Please keep in mind that this trip must be APPROVED by the school board before we can start finalizing plans. 

Date of Next Meeting:  March 10 at 6:30 p.m. in the Chorus Room.  THIS IS A CHANGE FROM MARCH 13! 

Minutes of October 22nd Meeting:

♫     Fall Concert Wrap-Up

Many thanks to everyone who helped make this event such a success!  Does anyone have performance clothing issues?  All students need to keep their clothing at home.  Mens’ shirts should be laundered.  Ladies dresses can be machine washed.  Please do not wash the tuxedos!  They will be cleaned at the end of the year.  We will collect all clothing at the end of the year. 

 Thought for the late spring/summer:  ALL clothing needs to be inventoried for size.  Andrea Bontempi has information on some very nice tuxedo bags that will have our logo on them.  They will be approximately $18 each and will be durable.  Many thanks to Mr. Pavol for taking some fabulous pictures!  I will attempt to put them on our website for everyone to see them. 

♫      Butterbraid Sales

All students should have order forms.  Our goal is to pay for the extra tuxedos we had to purchase and to also buy recording equipment for the chorus room.We have set a goal for each student to sell at least 10 braids.  There are incentives for students to sell more!  Money and order forms due November 1.  Pick-up is November 14 from 2:30 – 6:00 p.m. in the chorus room. 

We need volunteers to tally orders on Friday, Nov. 2.  Mrs. Preciado will be helping, but we could use another person.  Please let Mrs. Jones know if you can help.

We need volunteers to help on delivery/pick-up day.  If you can help after school on the 14^th, please let Mrs. Jones know.  

♫      Calendar – Upcoming Events

November 15 – Mid-State Chorus Event.  This will be held at TSU.  I will need a parent (maybe with a van!) to drive the Mid-State students to the TSU campus early in the morning.  Please let Mrs. Jones know if you can do this.  More information regarding the schedule will be sent home shortly. 

Saturday, December 8 – Dickens of a Christmas Concert in downtown Franklin.  Chamber Choir & FORTE (possibly Concert Choir – please leave date open!)  More on performing time soon. 

Monday, December 10, 6:00 p.m. – Chamber Choir & FORTE to sing at Williamson Medical Center Tree Lighting. 

Thursday, December 13 – Winter Chorus Concert, 7:00 p.m. FHS Auditorium.  ALL chorus members and  piano class members.  Could we plan a party for after the concert? (maybe even with music using the cafeteria?) 

♫      May 1 Dinner Concert

Time:  We will start serving dinner at 6:30 p.m.  The possibility of opening up another night was discussed.  Mrs. Jones will check with Coach G. to see if May 2 might be doable as well.

 Menu:  I have discussed the menu possibilities with Coach G. of culinary arts.  He suggested we go with some sort of baked chicken, vegetable, salad and dessert, coffee and tea.   

Tickets:  We have a volunteer to help with making the tickets.  We will need volunteers to take up tickets the night of the event.

         Publicity:  Mrs. Jones will ask Ms. Estes of the Graphic Arts classes to make posters for us.  We will need volunteers to distribute posters. 

Decorations:  Welcome to FRANKTOWN them with a town scene design.  We will need fencing, shrubs, mailboxes… anything that will make the cafeteria look like a “town.”   We will need a “set designer” to help collect the pieces and get us organized!  We will also need help taking the “set” down.

 Costuming:  Mrs. Lemonds has volunteered to get costumes together.  If you would like to help her, please let Mrs. Jones know. 

Is there a parent who would like to take on the responsibility of helping the students write the script?  Is there a writer in the house?  Please let Mrs. Jones know if you could help us write a highly dramatic soap opera!

Minutes of September 20th Meeting:

Mrs. Jones opened the meeting by thanking the parents for their hard work preparing and manning our Homecoming Food Booth.  We did make over $200, so the effort was a success!  Many thanks to Vee Blanton for making the superb tasting meat, and also to parents who bought bar-b-que to take home.  The singers did a beautiful job of performing the National Anthem for the football game that night.

Mrs. Jones reported on the progress with issuing performance clothing.  All girls now have their dresses.  The tuxedos have been numbered and cleaned and are ready to be issued.  We desperately need to find some clothing bags for them before we issue them.  We will probably need to buy a few more tuxedos for our guys this year.

The Fall Chorus Concert is set for October 18 at 7:00 p.m. in the Auditorium.  Toni Peterson will be organizing a reception for the singers after the concert.  If you would like to help with this, please email her.

We will need to take pictures for the yearbook in our concert dress.  More information regarding this will be forthcoming.

The Dickens of a Christmas weekend is Dec. 8-9.  Chamber Choir will definitely be performing for this, and perhaps Concert Choir.  More information regarding this will be sent to you shortly.  The performances will be scheduled in the late morning, early afternoon time period on Dec. 8.  Please pencil this performance on your calendar!

Our Winter Concert will be December 13 in conjunction with Mr. Smith's piano classes. 

If your student is a member of FORTE, please mark March 11 in your calendar.  This will be FHS Arts Night, and FORTE will be performing a concert for this event.

A committee is forming to help with the May 1 Dinner Concert in the cafeteria.  Please contact Toni Peterson if you are interested in helping with this effort.  This will be a major fundraiser for us this year.

After much discussion regarding fundraising, it was decided that we will again sell Butterbraids this fall in time for the holidays!  This time around, all money raised will go into the General Chorus Fund to offset the costs of purchasing tuxedos and other items for the Choral Department.  Kick-off for this will be sometime in October.  We will let you know a firm date shortly.  Mrs. Jones will create a budget detailing approximate costs of running the choral department.

Our next meeting will be Monday, October 22 at 6:30 p.m. in the Chorus Room.

Minutes of August 30th Meeting:

Our first Chorus Booster Parent Meeting was held on August 30 at 6:30 p.m.  The meeting was well attended and great things were accomplished!  Mrs. Jones welcomed everyone and thanked them for being there.  Email addresses were collected for Mrs. Jones to use to communicate during the year with parents.  If you are not receiving email updates, please send Mrs. Jones your email address.  Hopefully by now, all chorus parents have seen the handbook.  If not, please click on the link and review the procedures and policies of the FHS Choral Department. 

Fees are graciously accepted by the department to help purchases music and other items throughout the year.  Here is a breakdown of fees:

Chamber Choir women:   $90 - includes dress and chorus fee.  If they need a t-shirt, add $10.  If they are auditioning for Mid-State, add $5.

Chamber Choir men:  $50 - includes uniform maintenance fee and chorus fee.  If they need a t-shirt, add $10.  If they are auditioning for Mid-State, add $5.

All Concert Choir members:  $50 - includes uniform maintenance fee and chorus fee.  If they need a t-shirt, add $10.  If they are auditioning for Mid-State, add $5.

Mrs. Jones reviewed the calendar, adding the performance of the Star-Spangled Banner for the Homecoming football game. All chorus members should wear their chorus t-shirts and meet in the chorus room at 6:30 p.m. to warm-up and do a sound check before the game.  Our first major performance will be our Fall Chorus Concert on Thursday, October 18 at 7:00 p.m. in the Auditorium.  All chorus members are required to perform.

Opportunities for service to the chorus were discussed.  A uniform committee has been formed to fit girls in dresses, sew numbers in tuxedos, wash tuxedo shirts, and clean and fit tuxedos.  If you would like to help with this effort, please contact Mrs. Jones.  A committee has also been formed to begin preparations for our Dinner Concert scheduled for May 1.  This will be a major effort and we will need lots of help to make this a success.  Please email Mrs. Jones if you would like to become a member of this committee.

Mrs. Toni Peterson is heading the effort to again have a food booth at Homecoming this year.  She will be contacting folks who signed up to help.  Our menu again will be bar-b-que sandwiches and sweet tea.

Officers were elected:  Toni Peterson, President; Andrea Bontempi, Vice President; Tobi Preciado, Treasurer.

Our next meeting will be September 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the chorus room.  Thanks again to everyone for their support of the choral program!