A Tale of Two Choirs

Christmas is performing arts season around here. With all the saxamaphone, clarinet, flute, violin, piano and sopranos around here we don't really have a choice.

In the last two weeks we have had two performances, choir in nature, that hit the polar opposites of performances: Thing One performing with Mapleton Chorale at Temple Square, and Eclair and the elementary school fine arts choir.

Mapleton Chorale:

Awesome Choir. You must audition and make the "cut" before you can sing. Sang in Alice Tully Hall in NYC last June. Previous director is now Assistant Director to the MoTab. Like I said, AWESOME CHOIR.

Eclair is in Show Choir. They are all 5th and 6th Graders. The ones who didn't choose Ballroom Dance (perhaps they have two left feet?), or Orchestra (perhaps they don't play an instrument?), Guitar (perhaps they don't want to be rock stars?) or Drama (the don't die well onstage as is required when they only do Romeo & Juliet every year...).

No auditions or singing ability required for this little group. They love everybody. I must say, that I was expecting a painful performance (because there are a bunch of 6th grade boys with squeaky voices, you know).  I was VERY pleasantly surprised by what a great job they did. Their acapella numbers were great. Really great. That choir teacher must really know her stuff, becuase this was better than the freshman choir at the high school. I didn't expect such great harmonizing.

So as a performance, it doesn't fall short at all.

Where the big difference is, is here:

Thing One there, on the top. Matching uniforms. Clean faces. Smiling faces, spectacular voices.

Back to Eclair's choir:

Uniforms not so uniform. But that's okay, their faces are clean. BUT - I'm missing the smiling faces - instead we have that kid on the left who looks like someone just shot his dog. I laughed out loud when I downloaded this from the camera.
As we continue along this breakneck race towards Christmas, I am doing and making much. But it's hard to post things because the people I'm making things for READ this blog, and I want their gifts to be a surprise! So I'm going to do two more awesome posts real soon, on stuff that I did last year and before, including these wonderful houses.

Bonus points to anyone who comments and knows what that roundish silver thing in the photo below is: