October Adventures in the Music LLC

Hello everyone!

October has been a fairly packed month in the Music LLC.  In addition to battling midterms, October has been jam-packed with various performances, conventions, contests, and of course Halloween!  The Lounge is still buzzing with activity; in fact the Residents of the LLC took it upon themselves to decorate the lounge for the holidays.  We had a great arts and crafts night, complete with spooky cookie decorating.

While the instrumentalists enjoyed some of their first performance experiences last month, the choirs had to wait until mid-October before their first performance.  It was a very memorable concert, in more ways than one.  Near the end of the concert, we experienced a power outage; the entire cathedral went black.  Surprisingly, nobody panicked!  Everyone whipped out their cell phones and helped to light up the cathedral. When it became evident that the power would not be returning anytime soon, we decided to continue the performance by cell-phone light.  We closed the program with Leonard Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow," sung by all of the combined choirs.  Somehow the lack of light turned into a very moving experience.

The choir, lit by cell phones

In addition, several of our students attended the Wisconsin Music Educator's Association (WMEA) Conference in Madison, Wisconsin.  Each year, every music teacher takes off two days of classes to go be a student again in Madison.  They learn valuable tips and tricks from their peers, connect with other instructors and revitalize their passion in teaching.  The conference offers very reasonable prices for collegiate students, and many of our future educators got to attend and pick up some cool tricks.

WMEA Conference Logo

Most recently, several of our young vocalists went to compete at the National Association Of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Student Auditions.  This is treated like a formal audition.  You compete in a division calculated by your age and level in college.  We had several of our LLC members compete, one advanced to semi-finals, and another went all the way to finals, ultimately taking third place in her division!  Needless to say, we are very proud of her.

NATS Auditions Logo

As exciting as all of this has been, there will be even more coming up in November!  Classes are starting to pick up, and the LLC is feeling the heat.  We're all going to be working hard this upcoming month, so stay tuned!  We'll keep you posted!

Until then,

RA Eli