Tucson Videos!!

First off, if you did not read my post about the Tucson weekend, it is below on my last post.  I said I was going to get some of the videos up pretty quick so here they are!!

This video is from when we were at dinner.  Jason taught everyone a tag and then we all sang it together and it was a very pretty one. (the sound in the videos is not great, but both groups are on youtube if you want to look them up there)

This video is of the Scottsdale Sweet Adeline Chorus.  They have won four International Championships and hope to win their fifth this October at the International Competition in Hawaii.  These are two of the five or six songs that they performed at the Show of Champions Saturday night.

This video was also taken at the Show of Champions.  This is the Musical Island Boys Quartet.  They are from New Zealand and they won second place in the 2011 International Quartet Competition.  They are amazing and their style is very unique.  It is more like "Popershop" instead of Barbershop.  They put a lot of rhythm and soul into their music and I love it!  I have another video, but it was too big to upload :(

Hope you enjoyed the videos.  There are tons more on youtube if you want to see more.  Remember that my post about the Tucson weekend was the post right before this so check it out.  I put pictures on that post. 

Tucson Performance!

     Hey everybody.  Ok, so I have not posted yet about the Sacramento Sound Youth Chorus performance that we did in Tucson, AZ.  First, last Thursday night after the American River Chorus practice, there were 7 guys from the chorus that came to my house and spent the night so they did not have to get up super early and go to the airport.  We went to the after-glow, Wal-Mart and then we finally got to the house.  We got to bed at about 2 am Friday morning and were on our way at 8 am Friday.
     We left Friday and flew into the Phoenix-Mesa airport.  We rented two vans and drove from Mesa to Tucson.  Once we got there, the Harmony Foundation had ordered pizza for all of the participating choruses.  There was a TON of pizza.  The most I have ever seen in one place in my life.  There were over 350 pizzas.  That is one big order!!  After we ate, we went to the hotel and got settled in.  Then we went to the Friday night show which was awesome.  After the friday night show, we went back to the hotel and rehearsed for about an hour and forty-five minutes until about 1 am.  Then we all got to go to bed. :)
     We had to be up and ready to start rehearsal at 9 a.m. Saturday.  We went straight over to the convention center right after rehearsal.  We were able to watch most of the other choruses perform except for three of them which was really cool!!(because we were backstage warming up)  At intermission, we had some snacks and then went to the first waiting room to get ready to go on stage.  There were three different waiting rooms that we had to transfer to before we went on stage.  We did some last minute practices and then went on stage.
     Our performance went very well.  There were so many things that we could have done better, but there were so many things that we did very well.  I was happy with our performance.  It was a lot of fun.  We also got to see all the rest of the other youth choruses after us.  We were ranked excellent in our overall performance which was very exciting for us.  After all the announcements were made, we went to change, then to our coaching session with one judge from each of the categories; singing, music, and performance.  After we spent an hour with each of them, we sounded great.  It was amazing to hear the huge transformation that we made in such a short period of time.
     After our evaluation session, we went to dinner and then to the show of champions.  The Show of Champions is where they have some special groups perform and then all the champions from the weekend perform.  It was so awesome!!!  The first group was the Scottsdale Sweet Adeline Chorus.  They have won multiple international championships and they were amazing.  I could have watched them the whole time.  All the groups that performed that night were great.  I wish it would have gone on all night.  The next morning we had to be up and ready to be on the road at 8 am because we still had to drive to Mesa.  We got back to CA at about 2 pm and decided that we have to have a chorus party sometime in the near future because of all the fun we had.  We all got to know each other so well and it made it cool cause we were bonded.
     I had such a great time at the Mid-Winter Convention this year.  I hope that I get to go next year also, even though I am going to be in college.  Next year it is in Orlando, Florida.  That is going to be so awesome!!
     Here are some pictures from Tucson!

This is our practice in the airport while we were waiting.  Our flight was delayed an hour so we had some time.

In the van driving to Tucson!

This was our late Friday night practice.

We were all very tired.

This is during our Saturday morning practice before the competition.

Inside the Music Hall waiting for the show to start

During intermission eating our snacks!!

This is after the performance right before our evaluations.

We had to wait a little, so we were going over the songs from last year. 

During the evaluations

This is at the mexican restaurant for dinner.  

It was AWESOME!!!  :)

This is at the end of the Show of Champions

Everyone was standing and singing "Keep the Whole World Singing"

Sunday morning at the airport running on "tired" energy.  Some of us did not get to bed until 5 in the morning and we had to be up by 7. 

Our last picture before we all left to go home.  We all had such a good time together. 

These are some of the pictures of the other youth choruses that competed in the Youth Festival.

Here we are at the end of our performance.

Tucson was a ton of fun.  I do have some videos, but I don't have time to put them up how.  They will be up in the near future though. (hopefully sooner rather than later :)