Christmas Show 2007

with Tonic Sol fa

December 19, 2007

The ice storm on December 10th and 11th forced us to cancel the show on the 11th, but thanks to a lot cooperation and plenty of luck, we were able to re-schedule the show for December 19th. As always, Tonic Sol-fa put on a great show with lots of new songs and fresh entertainment. The VOA chorus put on a pretty good show if I do say so myself!

Here you see a fraction of the equipment that TSF brings to put on their colorful and entertaining show. Several VOA guys were on-hand all afternoon to help unload and setup.

John Carr (VOA, right) helps Mark McGowan (TSF) crank up one of the two speaker towers.

Mike Scheidegger (VOA, left) and James Fisher (VOA, center) help Greg Bannwarth (TSF, right) with the backdrop.

Mark McGowan (left) and Ed Witham (VOA, right) crank up the other speaker tower.

James Fisher caught me (Scott Johnson) helping setup some of the many LED lighting pods. About 12 of these units provided much of the color for the backdrop and hanging, uh, thingies on-stage.

John Carr also helped hook up the LED units.

Once the stage is pretty well set, the TSF lighting guy (Jim Sorby, not shown) starts working on focusing lights. In the meantime, the four guys from TSF warm-up. They have obviously done this MANY times since they go through a seemingly complicated pattern of vowels and scales, without any visible "direction". Most importantly, they sound like one voice -- true professionals.

More warm-ups and sound-checks, then...

...the show began. Actually, they of course sang after Voices of America -- you can see their pictures here.

Another key to TSF's success is their interaction with the audience.

They also manage to get volunteers (victims?) on-stage. Here, and in subsequent pictures, Mark and Greg serenade and "dance" for a young lady.

The audience had a chance to vote on which pair of tights Greg would wear this year. Purple won, but....

...Greg (right) actually wore a combination of two of the tights while Mark got into the "tights" act and wore the purple set.

Mark gets "emotional" for a moment...

...I think it was Greg reading his thoughts.

Then Jared got into the act with his rendition of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch".

Of course it wouldn't be a TSF show without an appearance from Plastic Santa (see http://www.plasticsanta.org/ for details).

Plastic Santa gets a lot of help from Greg.

Did I mention a colorful staging?

The guys take a bow, and eventually came back for an encore song -- I think the first time in the three years they have been in St. Joe.

Oddly enough, we see a lot of female fans for TSF that maybe haven't been to VOA shows in the past!

Click here for more pictures from a different angle, including VOA.