Voices Past and Present
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Transitioning To a New Year
Wednesday night (Sept. 18) began the meetings and rehearsals galore for a cappella officers. We rehearsed (*ahem* sang through twice) Stanford's alma mater, "Hail, Stanford, Hail!" in preparation for the next day's Freshman Convocation. The really stupid thing is that WE DIDN'T END UP SINGING AT CONVOCATION. Someone messed up and the soloists who were supposed to lead the entire crowd to sing it through a second time (after they sang it the first time) just stopped singing. And then the recessional began. And all the a cappella members (all eight groups were dressed alike in blue jeans and white shirts and we definitely had a clear presence at the Convocation) were looking at each other like, "um, weren't we brought here to SING?!" So that was a big mix-up. And then there was more mix-ups regarding our duties in helping tear down the millions of chairs (okay so it only felt like millions of chairs) after Convocation, and also later that night after Parents Dinner. The long and the short of it is that it was a long day of manual labor, which ended up being the second day of three days of manual labor for me, since I was still in the process of moving in more or less by myself. (Thank you to Bryan and Justin for helping a bit, though!)
A cappella recruiting began day after Convocation, which meant: 1) manning a table in White Plaza, 2) lots of flyering, 3) many Tmony rehearsals to get in shape for Orientation A Cappella Fest, and 4) lots of Core discussion to prepare for the coming year. It was all very busy but things went quite well. It was amazing how quickly we got our group sound up and going again. I guess it shows how hard we worked to make good recordings on the CD last year. It was great to see everyone again and catch up and spend some last few days together as old Tmony before we formed the new group for the new year. We had a CD celebration party on Saturday (Sept. 21), because ... >DUH DUN DUN< ... Echoes is FINALLY out of production!!! We received the shipment of them the *day* before our party (thank goodness!). I think the CD design looks AWESOME and I'm totally excited that the project is finally finished! Please visit the newly redesigned Testimony website and click on "Albums" for the CD order form if you're interested. :D
The Orientation Show on Tuesday night went really well, in my opinion. All in all I was very pleased with our performance (we sang "Heaven's Heart" and "Worlds Apart") and our continually improving relations with the other a cappella groups on campus. I think we're finally becoming a part of the a cappella community for real, which is great!
Our audition signups ended up being packed after the a cappella show on Tuesday. We had to extend our audition slots on both ends (before and after) in order to hear everyone who wanted to try out for us. We had so many amazing auditionees! After two days of auditions and a third day of callbacks, we made the (long and incredibly difficult) decision to accept 10 new members to Testimony, which, including the 8 returning members, makes 18 of us in Testimony this year! We decided to expand our soprano and alto sections to 5 members each, and we have 4 tenors and 4 basses. I could go on forever talking about the new group, but I'll leave that for another post. Just suffice it to say that I am REALLY pleased with how Testimony is going so far this year, in many many ways. Let me introduce you to Testimony A Cappella 2002-2003... :)
(new members in bold, Core in italics, section leaders listed first)
Sopranos
Kari Doyle (junior)
Megan Donahue (senior)
Kristen del Rio (soph)
Ssonia Chee (junior)
Nalani Grace (frosh)
Altos
Tina Wong (director) (junior)
Chi-En Chien (soph)
Jenny Alyono (frosh)
Michelle Forrest (senior)
Jennifer Huang (frosh)
Tenors
Lawrence Hsin (grad student)
Shih-Yang Ang (grad student)
Adam Harris (frosh)
Uchenna Okoye (junior)
Basses
Bryan Lung (junior)
Eric Lowe (junior)
Justin Kao (soph)
Sanghyup Kwak (frosh)
The auditions process itself was rather grueling and involved the aforementioned two all-nighters, but miraculously I got through it and even managed to be conscious enough to enjoy a very fun post-audition retreat with the new group (except for just a couple who couldn't make it). I took them back to Castro Valley (woohoo! ;) ) and we spent the day (Saturday, after rolling out the new members that morning! Ask me for a definition if you don't know what that means...) hanging out at my house, eating, going to Lake Chabot for a couple hours, playing lots of games, eating some more, singing, worshipping, and talking. We slept at my house that night, and then we all went to church together at The River the next morning (yup, drove all the way down to San Jose) and had lunch at a Chinese/Vietnamese noodle place in Cupertino afterward.
YAY TESTIMONY!
