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International Coverage!
Intro: This is the home base for coverage of our trip to Salt Lake City. I (Scott Johnson) will try to make daily updates, including pictures! So be sure to check back for pictures and information. The latest entries will be at the top of this page, but be sure to check out earlier entries below.
Latest News (Monday, 7/11/05, 6:30 pm): As far as I know, we're all home (except for a few taking an extended vacation). It's great to be home. Here are a bunch more pictures from guys I either just got the pictures, or I had forgotten I had them, or the leftovers from my camera (most without captions).
Saturday, 7/9/05, 11:30 pm: I haven't forgotten you...it's just been a long day of "normal" stuff (we had hoped for a really busy day, oh well!) Today was the Chorus contest, which was amazing. It starts to make more sense where we rank when we see other choruses -- of course, we still out-scored some of them!
Then tonight was the Quartet finals. The interesting thing was that the out-going champion is Gotcha, which is our featured quartet for our 2006 spring show. Better yet, the NEW champion, Realtime is our featured quartet for our 2007 show! Thanks to the alert and knowledgeable Shaun Agnew, we had just recently signed Realtime; so once again, perfect timing by the BarberBoys.
I doubt there will be any more updates from Salt Lake City, my flight is early afternoon and we have to leave the hotel at 11:00 am. I hope to add more pictures as they come in once we get home, so watch for more stuff later in the week.
Thanks to those of you who have emailed or sent back word that you have enjoyed the updates. I'm glad we were able to share a little of our experience through this page. We REALLY appreciate the support from family and friends. I'm very proud of the job we did out here; now we know we have work to do when we get home. Coming up is a Trails West performance on August 19th on the main stage and then a major membership drive (hint, hint) for fall contest in October. Stay tuned for details!
Friday, 7/8/05, 11:00 pm: For an "off" day, a lot went on today...college contest, lots of walking and food...semi-finals. Here are a few pictures from the day - click here.
Friday, 7/8/05, 4:00 pm: Tomfoolery found out they were 17th in the Collegiate contest. They were hoping for a little higher placing, but weren't we all!
Here is the first set of pictures from yesterday; this will show you most of the activities leading up to our performance as well as our wrap-up meeting. Pool Party pictures from last night (viewer discretion advised!)
Friday, 7/8/05, 2:30 pm: Tomfoolery performed this morning (still waiting for results). They did a great job and we are very proud of them. Here's a picture of them on-stage -- it's not great, but I was quite a ways away and also didn't want my camera to make a lot of noise during their set.
By the way, here's a link to our scores from yesterday. The top six scores won't be released until after the main chorus contest Saturday.
Thursday, 7/7/05, 8:00 pm: We placed 9th. But they only take the top six for the chorus finals on Saturday. Yes, there is a sense of disappointment, but NOT of embarrassment. We were very proud of our performance, we followed "our plan" and the crowd loved it. So why didn't the judges like it more? Well, they still liked our performance -- it was just a really tough competition. I've heard that we were only 7 points out of 7th (which would have made us Saturday's mic tester chorus) and only 15 points separated 7th through 11th. That's a really close contest considering there are 1200 points possible. We have had many people stop us and compliment our performance and we take great pride in that.
So what happens now? Well in the short term, we will wildly support Tomfoolery in the College Quartet contest tomorrow as well as 12th Street Rag, Vocal Spectrum and 3 Men & A Melody in the quartet contest. And of course we're rooting for Kansas City to do well on Saturday. In the slightly longer term, our target has always been Fall contest -- if we can win our district (which means beating KC, sorry guys), we would not have to worry about the preliminary chorus contest next year. But for now, we will enjoy the rest of the week without of the pressure of competition.
Thursday, 7/7/05, 11:00 am: We just finished our morning rehearsal -- it went great. We also had the entire Kansas City chorus (Heart of America) come in and sing us their rendition of "Friends". It was a very moving experience for everyone; many of us are personal friends with many of them so it means a lot to have their support. They also gave us blue wrist bands with a flag imprinted to represent the "America" of their name and the "American" of ours. We also heard from Scott Hecker (Hi Scotty if you're reading this) who is stationed at an airport in Iraq. He was able to hear us by phone and sent back his good wishes. Here are some early pictures - click here. Be patient for future updates, it's getting kind of busy!
Wednesday, 7/6/05, 11:30 pm: We had a GREAT first rehearsal this evening. We had all 88 singers in the room and the sound was great. Jim Casey stopped by for a few minutes, which is a huge inspiration. I'm getting lots of pictures from other cameras, so rather than try to integrate everything, I'll link them by camera/photographer (and this is just the start)...
Wednesday, 7/6/05, 7:00 pm: Ok, I got interrupted, but here are a bunch more pictures from Wednesday -- click here. We're about to start out first rehearsal here at 7:30. It will be nice to have everyone in one place at one time; probably the first time ever for this exact group.
Wednesday, 7/6/05, 4:00 pm: LOTS of people are arriving, the trailers are unloaded, risers are getting setup and people are getting to their rooms. I'm in the process of updating a lot of stuff in the next few minutes/hours. To whet your appetite, here is a picture from the LDS Conference Center during the Opening Ceremonies...
Tuesday, 7/5/05, 10:00am: The first waves have arrived. Ten of us arrived in Salt Lake this morning at about 8:30. We had a VERY early departure from St. Joseph -- 4:15 A.M.! -- but everything went smoothly. Click here for some Tuesday pictures, more on the way later.
Proof that we made it! Sandy Gumm, our president,
Saturday: WHAT A GREAT SEND OFF! If you didn't know, we had a final rehearsal followed by a "send-off" concert, which included some of our normal repertoire plus a full-blown version of our contest set. THANK YOU to everyone that came out to wish us well, it was a great way to start our journey to Salt Lake City! Click here for pictures.
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