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2018/2019 RISE Chorales

Young women in 5-12 grades who are interested in the RISE Chorale are invited to attend one of two Open Rehearsals on August 19 and 26 from 3-5 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 520 Washington Avenue.

Prospective members are encouraged to both rehearsals, but must attend at least one to be considered for membership in the 2018/2019 season.

A brief Parent’s Meeting will be held Sunday, August 26 at 5 p.m. immediately following the rehearsal to communicate details on the membership process, the upcoming season and more.

After the August 26th rehearsal, new member invitations will be sent out, and all members are expected to attend an overnight Kick-Off Retreat September 8-9, 2018.

RISE charges tuition, which is paid utilizing a family-friendly subscription service through PayPal.  There is also a modest fee for the Kick-Off Retreat.

To accept your seat in the 2018/2019 season, you must be subscribed to the PayPal tuition subscription (or you’re welcome to pay in full by cash or check) and have paid the Kick-Off retreat fee no later than September 1.  If you are not subscribed or paid by this date, your child will not be able to attend the retreat, or participate in the 2018/2019 season.

Please contact us if you have any questions, or would like more information.

On Sunday, December 10 at 6:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 520 Washington Avenue, RISE Chorales will perform “Music Through The Ages”, a celebration of songs throughout history.  In addition, there will be a special holiday singalong to help put concertgoers in the holiday spirit.

Tickets for the concert are $5 in advance (until December 9) or $8 at the door.

RISE Chorales is a unique choral experience for middle and high school aged young women.  In addition to artistic excellence, RISE singers do more, including participating in service projects and social activities that create long-lasting bonds, building community and character.

Kinder

“I’ve decided to be happy,
I’ve decided to be glad,
I’ve decided to be grateful,
For all I ever had.
I’ve decided to let go
Of all this pain tonight.
I’ve decided to let go
Of all these demons inside.

I’ve decided to be open
To that little voice inside
Telling me I’m beautiful
It’s okay to be alive.
I’ve decided to be kinder
To myself when I am sad.
I’ve decided to be grateful
For all I ever had.

I know I am blessed
I know all I ever wanted was this
I know I don’t need more
I’ve got what I came for”

The words to the song Kinder are so on target that it’s become “our” song.  This characterizes not only our final concert, but the incredible first full season that lead up to it.

With a mission of revolutionizing and inspiring singing excellence through singing, socializing, and serving, I’ve taken some time to reflect back over the past season, evaluating pictures, video clips and examining memories.  As the Founder and Artistic Director, I had clearly articulated goals at the beginning of the year, and this reflection helped me realize that we’ve exceeded everything on my initial plan.

Today’s blog is all about what those goals are and how we were able to accomplish them; it will break down this season’s accomplishments based on our motto Sing, Socialize, Serve.

It’s helpful to get down on paper why we do things, which also helps our team as we make plans for the 2017/2018 season.  Next year, we will look back on these thoughts as we craft the next year’s of goals, dreams, and expectations.

Music, Technique & Genre:

As stated in our mission, through singing excellence and music literacy, we foster deeper relationships and inspire personal growth, and give back to our communities through meaningful service.  Music is what brings us together and is the focal point of rehearsals and planning.

We’ve all experienced being in charge of the radio on a long car ride – it can be a tough job! You don’t want to spend your time flipping around stations, but you also don’t want to land on a station that only one person in the car likes.

Repertoire selection is just like that. There are so many wonderful choices out there and when our singers are open and excited about all the different styles, genres, and sounds, it doesn’t help narrow down the selection.

However, as Artistic Director, I recognize that there is a purpose behind each selection. In the big picture, we want our concerts to be entertaining — specifically, we want our audiences to walk away with their heart, mind, and soul all touched and leave feeling uplifted and inspired.

To accomplish this, we need to make sure we have variety of music — secular and sacred, happy and sad, fast and slow — to accomplish this.. We must also make sure that each song presents an opportunity for growth and skill development of the singers.

This season we selected repertoire from the Renaissance through today.  We particularly want to thank Katy Perry for writing a song called Rise, we know she meant it just for us! For each piece we performed, I identified and taught based on three concepts

• A vocal technique/skill
  • breath control or vowel placement
• A musical skill
  • a vocabulary word or historical fact
• Something that would connect to us socially and emotionally
  • this usually relates to the words, but sometimes the story of the composer or the concept behind the song creation

Lipstick

While people often wax poetic about their past, I’ve never heard anyone say they want to go back to middle school. And, while others might dream about going back to their high school days, they may not be remembering the crushing stress of so much riding on your daily decisions for your future, and when something as simple as sitting at the wrong lunch table can be a monumental disaster.

This was always a factor in my weekly rehearsal planning.  These young ladies had navigated another day at school – they may come to rehearsal stressed, sad, happy, overwhelmed, hyper – you never knew. The key was providing an environment where those things could be left at the door and the heart could be mended, encouraged, and filled for another week through the power of music and intentional social interactions.

Because we sing, socialize and serve, we also encourage social goals in our rehearsals, at retreat, and while on tour.  These include confidence, clear speaking, individuality, professionalism, appropriate dress, and yes, lipstick.

This all came together on this season’s choir tour. The older girls offered to help our younger girls with hair and makeup to prepare for our spring headshots by Dan Biggerstaff.

When the younger girls were ready, they looked like models! They were beaming, radiating joy and happiness. It was such a special moment to see those older ladies passing along their hair and make-up expertise with our younger ladies – while sharing stories, laughter, snacks, and fellowship.

Getting Outside The Bubble

Thinking outside the bubble of one’s self is such a challenge, especially for young adults when middle and high school can be consumed with comparing to others and changing to fit an imaginary mold of what it is to be “cool”.

We use service projects to experience what it is like to think about others and take a moment to step back and realize the world around us. I have two special memories to share.

The first was looking out into the audience at the Savannah Friends of Music Party a la Carte and seeing the tears on the faces of all different generations as we performed.  I can assure you they were tears of joy!

These people were brought together because of music, and the funds raised would immediately be poured back into our community to ensure the continuation of beautiful music for moments such as these in the future.

The next favorite moment this season was having a few of our singers get up in front of a 1,200 runners at a local race and perform the National Anthem. I was unable to conduct because I was in the crush at the start line, but they conducted themselves and sang with a gorgeous, free sound.  The best part was hearing the comments of the runners around me when the girls finished about how wonderful they sounded and how confident they looked.

What’s Next

Looking forward, the future is bright. In addition to staying true to sing, socialize and serve, we have plans for intentional growth that will ensure the group voice lesson feel of our rehearsals as well as the individualized attention so each young lady is celebrated for who she is.  

As a result, we will be able to fulfill our vision: through singing together, our vision is to build knowledgeable, innovative, and strong future leaders in our communities. We provide a place for young singers to develop and enhance their musical talent and establish and nurture relationships. Our singers connect and transfer the skills developed through RISE into the broader community throughout their life.

RISE Chorales announces Fall Kick Off

RISE Chorales, a new Savannah-based choral organization, is accepting new singers for its Young Women’s Chorale for the fall season.

This unique new choir offers high-school women the choice of date and location to rehearse, and additional opportunities to sing, socialize and serve.

“We wanted to create a choir flexible enough to meet the needs of our singers,” comments Emily Williams Burch, Founder and Artistic Director.  “We’re thrilled to be able to offer a Monday afternoon rehearsal for Ardsley Park singers, and a Tuesday afternoon rehearsal for singers on the islands,” she continued.

With a commitment to sing, socialize and serve, RISE Savannah’s Young Women’s Chorale has partnered with Girls on the Run, and will volunteer — and sing — at a number of events throughout the year.

“We recognize high school students are busy with a variety of activities, so we’ve designed a choir program that allows them to participate as much as they want,” comments Cuffy Sullivan, RISE Director of Operations.  In addition to the flexibility of rehearsal date and location, high school women can choose to register by the semester or by the season.

The Young Women’s Chorale will kick off with an optional retreat August 20-21, and rehearsals start August 22 (Ardsley Park) and August 23 (Wilmington Island).

In addition to its Young Women’s Chorale, RISE is also offering four quarterly workshops for singers of all ages, with topics such as All State or audition preparation, or, just singing for fun.

For more information, or to register for the retreat, a semester, the season, or for a workshop, visit risechorales.com, like us on Facebook.com/risechorales, or call (912) 421-1112.

RISE Chorales is supported in part by a grant from the Savannah Friends of Music, and is a community collaborator with the Savannah VOICE Festival.

*Note: this blog was written as part of a writing/reflection project for Harvard’s online Business School CORe program – hope you enjoy*

We love to sing, listen to music, be entertained, be together. Singing is social, singing is educational, singing is so much fun! Newsflash to the music nerd (that’s me!) it’s even more than that….

My post-secondary schooling lasted 6 years, included a bachelors and masters in music education from two large research one universities, involved hours of singing in choirs, analyzing musical scores, discussing history and the composers throughout time, and of course mastering teaching techniques; but beyond balancing my checkbook (do people still do that?), business vocabulary was beyond me. “Hello, I was going to teach little people musical skills, have beautiful choirs that put on stunning performances that give the audience goosebumps, and send my students out into the world as literate musicians” – why do I need to understand multiple linear regression analysis, supply and demand curves, and gross profit revenue? 

I could pretend like the best of them to understand the P&Ls and the necessity of monthly reviews of random financial documents that meant absolutely nothing to me…well…news flash music peeps….directing and running a successful choir IS a business. 

Choir people are like “I’m a 501c3…we are a NOT for profit” so my motivations are totally different. Sure, in some ways, but you still have to have performance indicators, projections, and (gasp) a budget! In the artistic world, you can get away with so much, and that is ok. A lot of artistic people try to get by on their skill and art alone – but really – you have to know this side or hire someone who does – gone are the days of sitting and looking pretty – if you want to rock the world and give your choir and the singers it hosts every opportunity for success, it’s time you learn to talk the talk. 

After making this realization, I applied to HBX CORe (Harvard’s online Business School, Credential of Readiness) and was thrilled to be accepted. Why? I wasn’t exactly sure at first, classes involved so many numbers and graphs…but I did know, my summer would consist of 10 weeks, 3 classes, 9 credit hours, and some type of certificate of business readiness, if I passed…and that sounded promising. 

As I’ve been building a business at the same time as building a class, it really seemed that every time I sat down with my team and needed some vital information to make smart decisions moving forward, bam! We would be learning it in class – right time, right place – pretty much for every module! What do I mean? Let me tell you all about a few of my favorite moments: 

WHAT I LEARNED: :

Business Analytics with Professor Jan Hammond 

KEY CONCEPTS LEARNED: 

• How to visual, analyze and describe data
• Sampling/Estimation, what is a sample, where do you find it, how do you make estimations and utilize the sample
• Hypothesis Testing, how to find and test with measurable, quantifiable answers – I can say with 95% accuracy that you can’t argue with a p-value
• Single and Multiple Regression, what and how are variables related, and to what degree?
• The “soft skills” of business, going beyond the numbers and using your judgment to analyze and unitize the numbers you have connected.

How I used these new skills in my Choir Business: 

When planning for the next season we needed hard data to ensure what we were planning to launch would be beneficial to the city and meet their needs. I have been able to strategically find a sample, test a hypothesis, and then use regression analysis to explore different variables that could impact our future as a brand new business. Sounds smart, right? It was fun doing it too! 

Introduction to Economics for Managers with Prof. Bharat Anand

KEY CONCEPTS LEARNED:

• Willingness to pay (customers) and sell (sellers)- how to create it, measure it, use it to find that sweet spot for your business
• Supply and demand curves – how to manipulate them, what effects them, and why understanding them is important to your business
• Markets – what in the world are they, how do we fit into them, how do we stay around for years and years to come
• Biggest take away – make your business different, differentiate in every way possible, this makes you harder to compete with and increases your demand (hopefully)

How I used these new skill in my Choir Business: 

The epiphany of the language of willingness to pay and how to measure (and increase) demand for our product has been HUGE as we plan and prepare to officially launch. I am beyond thankful for Prof. Anand’s words about differentiation, it has been a mantra of ours to make ourselves unique. This is why we choose to do a subscription style payment plan to cover tuition so parents can have a lower WTP, the flexibility of paying smaller monthly increases demand, and the subscription model makes us unique – the only choir doing it that way! 

Financial Accounting with Prof. VG Narayanan

KEY CONCEPTS LEARNED:

• New Language (like ALL new! From the Financial Equation and everything that encompasses, to accounting principles, transactions, adjustments, and how to track them all in financial documents) 
• How to create important financial documents and WHY (I personally love the statement of cash flow doc most, but I see why balance sheets and income statements are needed and used regularly, and how journal entries, and the many ways to adjust them, t-accounts, and the trial balance are needed before you create them)
• Using ratios to explain them (so many super cool ratios!!!! Loved this section most!)
• Forecasting and predicting the future

How I used these new skills in my Choir Business: 

Many community group function on tiny budgets and rely on funders or grants. I want to be self sufficient as a choir business – and use precious funders dollars completely on the singers, especially to help those families who have the WTP (that means Willingness to Pay – thank you econ!) but not the cash flow available, or help us grow in new ways to reach and impact more young people in our city to Sing, Socialize, and Serve. I learned SO much about accounting, there could be a blog completely on that, maybe……accounting for music minds…..that’s an idea, right? 

IN CONCLUSION: 

I missed a lot of beach days this summer and have had many late homework evenings – but a huge part of me is going to miss this program and all the new skills and concepts it has taught. It was SO worth it and now I’m hungry for even more business knowledge! 

THE POINT OF ALL THIS: 

Today, every artist has to have business knowledge – your art IS a consumer product.

Choir IS a business (especially community choirs). I look forward to seeing how these business skill give my choir the means and ability to impact even more people through intentional and sound business practices. Who’s ready for a data set?