The 2009-2010 school year will be full of great musical opportunities for the students who are willing to work hard enough to make this our best choral year ever! As Mrs. Leacock and I enter our fifth full year of teaching together at the high school, we are greatly looking forward to our very bright and exciting future. Our mission of creating musical opportunities will challenge our students to achieve what WE believe has the potential to be a great choral music year!

We will begin our performance season with another new Fall Follies theme ... Fall Follies: AMERICANA! This year's Fall Follies will once again be performed in the style of a true Vaudeville show. This show will have narration to connect many of the famous songs about our vast American musical history! Fall Follies will also feature a variety of talented individual acts from within our choral department. The Follies will run on Thursday, October 29th and Saturday, October 31st at 7:30 pm and a Sunday matinee on November 1st at 2:30 pm.

On Wednesday December 16th, as part of our Winter Choral Concert, our vocal music students will present "Sure On This Shining Night". This concert event will involve all 8 choirs performing classical literature and seasonal carols in a variety of languages and musical styles. Admission is free to this event.

The format of our 7th annual "Wonderful Night of Music" piano recital has been changed this year. The master-classes during school will be held on Wednesday, January 21st. The piano master-class will consist of the world-class talent of Tom Scott from Cleveland, Ohio. Tom will take us on a very thought provoking musical journey throughout these classes. He will perform on the recently restored Knabe 9' grand piano and our 9' Grotrian piano. For this master-class, we are once again going to create a more intimate concert setting by bringing the students to the stage and surrounding the piano during the performance. There will be no evening concert this year, but the selected piano students will still be given the opportunity to perform for their classmates.

The UAHS Vocal Music Department has been fortunate enough to boast a series of local and state premieres. Past shows include 2006 Disney's Beauty and The Beast, 2007 Thoroughly Modern Millie, 2008 Jekyll & Hyde (USA Weekend National recognition as one of the top 5 high school productions in the country), and 2009 Damn Yankees. This year will be another first as we perform the American musical theater classic West Side Story for the first time in our school's storied history. "The world's greatest love story takes to the streets in this landmark Broadway musical that is one of the theatre's finest accomplishments. Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" is transported to modern-day New York City, as two young idealistic lovers find themselves caught between warring street gangs, the "American" Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. Their struggle to survive in a world of hate, violence and prejudice is one of the most innovative, heart-wrenching and relevant musical dramas of our time". The production staff will include choreographer Melanie Bales, professor of Dance at The Ohio State University and choreographer for Damn Yankees (2009), as well as Opera Columbus Artistic Director and Conductor Bill Boggs, conducting the pit orchestra. Our musical will run on Thursday, February 25th, Friday, February 26th, and Saturday, February 27th at 7:30 pm. We will again include a Sunday matinee on February 28th at 2:30 pm.

Another opportunity to show off our hard work will be during the Ohio Music Education Association's adjudicated event. This annual event will be our standard by which we measure our musical growth. We will be working hard to extend the tradition of superior level ratings in the two most difficult classifications A and AA. District contest is Friday and Saturday, March 12th and 13th. If we are fortunate enough to qualify for State contest it will be held the weekend of April 23rd and 24th. Both the district and state locations, as well as the specific day and time will be assigned to us the week before the event. More information to follow.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem Mass complete with full orchestral accompaniment and conducted by professor emeritus R.D. Mathey from Bowling Green State University was our featured major work last year. Doing a major work has become a tradition that we are very proud of. Other past works include Ron Leavitt's Missa Festiva, Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Franz Schubert's Mass in G, Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria, and John Rutter's Mass of The Children. This spring the Symphonic Choir and members of the Symphonic Band will combine to perform another major work adding to our quite impressive list. Our preliminary thoughts are on Howard Hanson's "Song of Democracy" based on the poetry of Walt Whitman. The specific venue and date for this concert are still to be determined. Our goal is the spring of 2010. More info. soon!

Sadly, our busy year (or 4 years) will come to a close on Wednesday, June 2nd at our Spring Choral Concert and Senior Roast. This 7:00 pm concert will culminate our year with some wonderful choral music and a sure to be memorable "roasting" of the senior class by the current juniors.

In closing, there are many reasons for the success of our program; the determination and resiliency of the students, the outstanding support of the high school and district administration, the love and vision of your directors and yet what do you get when you combine all of these attributes into one group …. The Vocal Music Boosters! As we have said many times, the Boosters are integral parts of our very efficient team. They too approach our program with determination and resiliency, support our students both spiritually and financially and have a love and vision as equally intense as the directors have. The past years of success have created a bond and an expectation! A bond was created with many of the officers and committee chairs returning to serve again, and an expectation that is already being aggressively approached by our new Booster president Mary Griffith and her staff. We would personally like to welcome all of the board members and committee chairs to what we feel will be a most innovative and exciting year.

As you can see, this is quite an involved schedule of opportunities we have planned for our singers. We hope you will find it within you to get as excited about our choral program as we are and get involved in the Vocal Music Boosters wonderfully supportive organization.

We'd like to teach the world to sing!!!

Mr. Eric Kauffman and Mrs. Amy Leacock
Vocal Music Directors