A Report from the 2006 Delaware Junior All-State Chorus Concert

We spent part of this weekend in upstate Delaware. On Saturday, Colleen performed as part of the 2006 Delaware Junior All-State Chorus. The All State Chorus is organized by the Delaware Music Educators Association. They do a great job.

The concert was held at Dickinson High School. It was preceded by two full days of rehearsal at Springer Middle School. Both are about an hour and a half to our north. That meant early mornings for parts of our family for several days last week.

Karen helped drive Colleen and her fellow chorus members from the Southern Delaware School of the Arts up to rehearsal on Thursday. She was also along as a chaperone/teacher. They left a bit before 5 a.m. On Friday, other parents did the driving, but I had to have Colleen out of the house at around 5 to get her to the rendezvous site.

Earlier in the week, I'd had meetings over in Washington DC. That called for me to head out at about 5 a.m. on Tuesday. I'm getting too old for this.

I had meetings upstate Friday afternoon, so I picked Colleen up from Springer after rehearsal and we met Karen and Christina at a motel jus north of the Route 1/Route 95 interchange. We passed the evening spending hundreds of dollars at Christiana Mall and slept-in a bit on Saturday before taking Colleen up to Dickinson for more rehearsal prior to the Concert.

The theater at Dickinson is a grand place and boasts one of the best examples left in this country of the old Theater Organs that used to grace America's movie palaces. According to the Dickinson Theater Organ Society, this instrument was built in 1928 for a theater in Philadelphia and was featured on local radio for many years. It was in disuse for several decades before being donated to the high school in 1968.

Christina and I went up for a closer look. These things are fascinating. We were treated to a short performance on this instrument before the choral concert. I love the deep, earth-shaking but smooth bass tones that these old pipe organs can produce.

The All State Junior Chorus sounded wonderful. They sang a mix of traditional choral and modern works. There was a Nigerian folk song, a traditional American folk song, and a Serbian gypsy song. They sang jazz and classical. They were accompanied by grand piano and used
a small set of tubanos for the Nigerian piece.

Afterwards, we wiped away proud-parentness from our cheeks, took pictures, and headed home.