Welcome


Welcome to Renate's Baton. This blog is mostly for and about my choir, The York Region Community Choir.

But, While I'm holding the baton, I'm in charge. So, if I want to talk about other parts of my life, I will. :)

The choir itself is a community and I'm discovering that we have a lot in common with one another besides our love of music and singing.

When I go off on a tangent, there is always a crowd coming along. Join us!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Learning about other choir opportunities

Hello Everyone!


An article in the Toronto Star today made me do some reading about a couple of other choir groups. It's really interesting to see how people are getting together to sing. It's really great that others have discovered what a joy it is to sing together in a choir!


I've got to digest what I've read and think about my reactions before I can share my thoughts about this. 


I really want to share this with you right away. So in the meantime, check these out: 
My Pop Choir
Choir!Choir!Choir!

Yours in harmony,


Renate

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Our Calendar

Hey, Everyone!


Have you started using our Calendar yet?


Go to the 'links' box on the left and click on YRCC Calendar. You'll get a pretty bare looking calendar, so go to the 'month' view (top right) and click the arrows at the top left near the date to scroll through the months. 


When you click on an event, a pop-up appears with all the details. One of the details is the location.  Click on 'map' and you get a Google map of the location.  I've included the list of music we're going to sing at Probus. Check it out!


If you have a Google calendar, the whole thing can be copied onto your calendar. You can invite people to events through the calendar and there are many more features that I'm just learning about. 


Visit this blog page regularly for information about our choir. For a quick look, go to the right panel and look at 'Nota Bene' and 'Schedule" to see if there's anything new you need to know about. 


Yours in harmony,


Renate

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Singing together every Monday in Newmarket

Hello and Happy New Year, Everyone!


It's great to be back after the holidays. It's great to be singing again and spending time with the great folks in the York Region Community Choir. 


There are a few new faces in the choir, which is wonderful. It's exciting to hear that people are hearing about us and loving what we do so much that they want to join us. I know that they weren't disappointed. I could hear the smiles in the voices. We had fun. 


We've got some great music to learn this season, and some of it will be very challenging, but some of it will be easy too. Our theme is Stage and Screen, so we'll be singing music from the opera to Broadway to Glee and it's sure to be entertaining- for us and our audiences. I know our families will love the May concert.


We are making connections with the community again, this time with a Probus Club in Newmarket. A couple of them are members of the choir. They've asked us to sing at their anniversary meeting in February. It's a bit of a big deal for us. For one thing, it's on a Thursday morning. Many of us work, but somehow a good number of people are going to make the time to be there. It's also very early in our season, so we're going to do a bit of scrambling to get a program ready. It'll be fine. We're good under pressure. And, we're a great team. People have been approaching me with all kinds of good suggestions for what to sing and how to pull it off. 


Everyone is looking forward to having CD's to help them learn their parts again this season. Sapphire and I got together over the holidays and did a bunch of recording. We've got a couple more recordings to do and then we'll make the CD's. Besides helping us learn our parts, the recordings are very useful for when Sapphire can't be with us. She and Jonathan will be travelling again at the end of the month, so we're going to make good use of the recordings this season. 


I'll try to keep posting regularly, but, as I told Sophie on Monday, this blog is not so much about my posts as it is a place to find information about the choir. The link to the calendar should see good use, and for quick reference, look at the boxes that are marked Nota Bene and Schedule on the right. Those boxes will have the places, times and dates you need to know. 


See you next Monday!


Yours in harmony,

Renate