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, July 28, 2012

Olympic Stars

Friday's Opening Ceremony event at the Mall was excellent!

The members of the York Region Community Choir who were able to come out and sing had a great experience. It was fun and very rewarding.

It was such an honour to represent our community that way. You could hear the power of the moment in our O Canada. It has never sounded better! A CTV camera was there to capture the event and we were on the news Friday night! Here's a link to that broadcast: click. The event is mentioned right at the beginning and you can hear a snippet of O Canada at 2:27.

We sang You Raise Me Up to open the event. It was beautiful. We're so lucky to be able to share such wonderful music.

The Olympic gold medalist who was there gave a wonderfully inspiring speech and we were able to see her gold medals.We were each given a commemorative medal and then we had our picture taken. My family was there and we had our picture taken too.




Monday, July 23, 2012

Everybody, Come to the Mall on Friday!

Tell your friends and family to come to the mall to hear us sing at the Olympic Opening Ceremony Celebration.
They are giving away commemorative medals and souvenir photos to the first 150 visitors. You can meet two Gold Medal Olympians, Anne Ottenbrite-Muylaert and Larry Cain. And, there is going to be a gymnastics demonstration as well.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Choir Olympic Event

Hey Everyone, the choir is in an Olympic Event!!!
400m sing? Note holding? Voice throwing?
Nope.
It's the 2012 Summer Games@UCM Opening Ceremony Celebration Event.
We'll be singing our National Anthem and You Raise Me Up at Upper Canada Mall to help Newmarket, York Region, and all of Canada cheer on our athletes in London on the day of the Opening Ceremony.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Music in the Park, Fairy Lake

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012, weather permitting, the York Region Community Choir is going to perform at Fairy Lake Park in Newmarket.

The concert will be the first of the Music in the Park season. Every summer, the Town of Newmarket has free outdoor concerts every Wednesday and Sunday evening throughout July and August.

We're the first one this year!

YRCC is going to put on a show similar to our spring concert: SHOWBIZ! We're featuring songs from stage and screen: opera, musical theatre, movies, television, and YouTube.

We have a great selection of choir, small group, and solo pieces mostly accompanied by our amazing pianist, Sapphire Navaratnarajah, and also featuring some guitar accompaniments.

The concert starts at 7:00 pm and runs about 1 1/2 hours.

Bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on to watch the concert. The rocks are pretty, but I prefer a soft seat.