The Vocal Sounds of Oklahoma sang a show for the residents and friends at Rivermont Assisted Living Center in Norman. We had a great time and the acoustics in the main attrium complimented the harmony.
Caleb Henderson's blog
We were asked to sing at the Elks Club this year. It went great celebrating Flag Day and feeling proud and patriotic with good harmony too.
Folding the new flag
History of the United States Flags
We weren't able to make it out west of the city for our chorus retreat this year so we decided to have one locally and ensuring everyone was socially distanced, wearing masks, and singing at least 6-12 feet apart. We had about 20 or so show but still had a blast working through our contest songs and getting coached by Joe Krones!
Singing socially distanced still worked pretty well. It makes you focus more on listening.
After the rise of COVID-19 our chorus, along with countless others across the nation, made the decision to halt in-person rehearsals. About a month later, we all had not sung together or met in person and decided we wanted to give back to the community. After a couple outdoor rehearsals keeping social distancing and attempting to sing in masks, we were able to line up singing for the health providers and professionals at Mercy Hospital. We performed outdoors for the Mercy Hospital staff in order to show our appreciation for their hard work and dedication during these trying times.
Getting ready to sing to the staff
Each year the Vocal Sounds of Oklahoma has our Officer Installation Banuqet to inaugurate our new voluntary board memebers for the upcoming year. This year was excellent and we had one of the highest turnouts in years.
The officers for 2020, being installed!
Our President, his wife, and daughter.
For many years, our chorus has had an annual spring show, but we also have put on a Chrstimas show for as long as many members can remember. This year's shows were at Bethany High School.
We love singing for the audience, and also enjoy dressing up.
Besides a traditional, heartfelt holiday song, we also enjoy having a fun time making the audience laugh.
Every October the Southwestern District of the Barbershop Harmony Society has its competition. Choruses and quartets come to compete against each other for the title of district champion. We spent the last 4 months working hard to improve our sound and performance on our competiton pieces and it paid off! We competed against some of the best choruses in the district and came out 4th and also received the award for the most-improved chorus. We wouldn't have been able to achieve this without coaching from Joe Krones. Joe is a gold-medalist bass that won the international quartet championship in 2011 and he also holds the record for being the youngest director in the barbershop harmony society.
The Vocal Sounds of Oklahoma (VSO) sang at the state fair this year for senior day. We were well received and loved sharing four part harmony with the audience.
Singing the natioanl anthem at the Oklahoma City Dodgers ball games has been an annual tradition we have enjoyed for the past few years. We had a good number of our members turn out and were well received by the audience.
Our weekend retreat at Salyer Lake was fantastic. The camp is about 30 minutes away from Red Rock Canyon and has many similar features surrounding the buildings and lake of the campground as well as being a peaceful and quiet getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city. Besides relaxation and fellowship between chorus memebers we brought out two different coaches and worked hard to refine our contest pieces. Donna Smith helped us work on our performance and refining our choreography package. We also were able to bring in 4 time quartet gold medalist Joe Connelly who helped us work everything required to sounding better.
