By Richard Lewellen

Christina Lewellen, Artistic Director

The Artistic Director is appointed by and serves at the discretion of the Musical Director. Formalizing a dynamic and a role that has been filled by Christina since the founding of Bella Nova, I hereby appoint her Artistic Director.

Throughout her life, Christina has been a member of successful women’s barbershop harmony choruses and quartets. Christina shines as a visionary in the branding. She conceived the incredibly potent brand of Epic, 2012 International Quartet Champions of Harmony, Inc. Epic won on their first outing in large part due to Christina’s branding, which included song selection, costuming, choreography/performance, and vocal style.

Christina brought this skill set to the launch of Bella Nova. Throughout our journey Christina has been developing our brand that has two key components: (1) we are strong women who love and support one another, and (2) we are an intergenerational chorus that welcomes and celebrates families singing together. Ultimately, we have created our Bella Nova family.

Some history…

Christina served as our first president and was instrumental in selecting our first competition music. Jerri White developed the core choreography to our first competition uptune, “Nobody’s Sweetheart Now.”

Following our first year of competition Christina lead the modifications to “Sweetheart” and chose “Secondhand White Baby Grand” as our ballad. With this package Bella Nova earned a 5^th place medal in its first International competition.

In our first competition package “Baby Mine” spoke to our love of family but also spoke to our backstory. Christina and I met because of a performance of my Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) International medalist quartet, Riptide. Within a year Christina and I were married and at our first men’s International as a married couple Riptide sang “Baby Mine.” Riptide was very focused on family and the birth of a set of twins for our tenor and a set of triplets for our lead (all of these babies were boys) was shared by the BHS. At this particular International Christina was pregnant with our first daughter, Morgan.

Bella Nova’s next competition ballad was “From the First Hello to the Last Goodbye.” In it we told the story of our chorus, including the central element that we were saying goodbye to a dear friend and chorus member as she moved away. Christina conceived of our “Fit As A Fiddle/For Me and My Guy” uptune to tell the Christina and Richard love story. Rather than being an indulgence, this choice was in recognition that Christina and I were well-known and that our role in the founding of Bella Nova was a story to share. With our strongest chorus to date this package earned 6^th place at International.

Christina refined the presentation of “Fiddle” and choose “If I Had My Way” to complete the “Lewellen” story. Christina was introduced as the bride in “Fiddle” and continued in that role as BN became a “greek chorus” to support her portrayal of her fears and hopes as a woman embarking on a new stage in her life. An important subtext was that we all had found a new family in Bella Nova and that we had great hopes for sharing our music and growing our BN family into the future, past this “founding” stage of our story.

During the development and refinement of this package Christina found additional members of BN who had performance talents to share. Adding to Jerri’s foundational training of a great many brand new barbershop harmony singers, Annie Ermlick and Teri Allred bring their years of theatre and musical comedy experience to enhance Bella Nova’s performance skills. They will continue to work with Christina in her formal role of Artistic Director in the realization of Christina’s vision for our next competition package, “Small Fry” and “The Little Girl.”

We are grateful to Jerri, Teri and Annie for their support of Christina’s vision for Bella Nova and for all they’ve done to help grow the performance skills of each singer.

Please join me in formally recognizing and celebrating our Artistic Director, Christina Lewellen.

Richard Lewellen

Musical Director – Bella Nova

Our exciting adventure to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, culminated with 4th place bronze medals… an outcome that was beyond thrilling for the Bella Nova sisters. We welcomed our FOURTH class to the Bella Nova history books and can’t wait to tackle the year ahead!

A huge welcome to Class IV, Betsy, Alessandra, Jennifer, Sarah, and Dawn! We love you ladies and we couldn’t have done it without you.

A big shout out to our chapter quartets, Relative Pitch and Mystic Chicks, for making us proud with Top 20 finishes!

Counting down the days until Orlando!

Earlier this month, we were THRILLED to have another chance to take the stage with our brothers in harmony, the Fairfax Jubil-Aires. For the last few years, we’ve teamed up to share the stage with the guys and present the residents of Northern VA with some awesome barbershop!

We were excited to debut our two newest quartets, Relative Pitch and Mystic Chicks. And our longer standing quartet, ReVoiced, also debuted its new bass! A stunning showing all around!

There were many magical moments throughout the weekend, but nothing compares to those blissful moments we spent on the stage with our director, Richard. In both the afternoon and evening shows, there were highlights of our sets that demonstrated the very best that the Bella Nova sisterhood has to offer.

Great news–we’ll have video to share soon!!!

For now, some pics of our awesome quartets!

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The pics are in, folks! We don’t have a bit of fun, don’t we???

We’re in the final weeks before heading off to our second Area Contest & Convention (AC&C) up in Rochester, N.Y. We’re super excited because we’re taking a song we LOVE (“Secondhand White Baby Grand”). It’s a song that means a lot to Bella Nova. It earned us a medal last fall at IC&C and it’s come to signify the Bella Nova journey. It’s a bit like slipping on your favorite pair of jeans…it always fits just right.

But our second contest song is a new uptune that we’ll be debuting with our Area 3 sisters on April 30th. It’s new-ish and the choreography package is super new-ish. We’ll be honest–we were more than a little nervous heading into last weekend’s rehearsal. We still had plenty of finishing touches to put on the song and we had been missing a slew of members due to sickness, work, life, etc.

Any singer who has experienced the weeks leading up to contest certainly understands how that deadline puts a healthy amount of pressure on a rehearsal. We were feeling it, no doubt. In fact, we even decided to push pause on our live streaming of rehearsals via Periscope so we could lock things down and channel our focus.

Then…in typical Bella Nova fashion… a few things happened:

1. We scheduled a LuLaRoe fundraiser for the morning of our rehearsal. Suddenly, we were more focused on cute patterns, and “omg, that dress is SOOOOO you,” and teamwork, and writing (BIG) checks. Shopping is therapy, people. Trust us.
   

   

   
2. At the previous rehearsal, we identified a few holes in our visual plan and asked the chorus for feedback. Long story short, the emails started flying and we basically crowdsourced the rest of our choreo package. Together, we came up with a plan that would work for area…and we have more enhancements in store for International contest (should we be fortunate enough to make the numbers!).
3. We rolled out this crowdsourced choreo at rehearsal. We were fierce. We were committed to getting it right. We worked it… HARD.
4. Then, a moment of utter “eye of the storm” breathlessness. As our two fabulous LuLaRoe consultants (thank you Jessie and Stephanie!!!!!) were cleaning up and preparing to leave, we asked them to join us in the rehearsal hall itself so we could properly thank them for supporting Bella Nova on its journey as a chapter. We guided Jessie and Stephanie to the center of the front row and we surrounded them in a great big Bella Nova circle. Then, we sang them our Bella Nova “goodbye” tag. From the first chord we hit, the ladies were physically affected. Jessie, in particular, immediately began shaking and teared up. Then we teared up. Her reaction was so powerful it was breathtaking. It stopped us in our tracks and suddenly our stress about finishing off a contest package was gone. For the ladies in the chorus who stood in front of her, it was a moment we’re unlikely to forget for many, many years. We love you, Jessie. Come back and join us… you’re a part of our family now!
5. We talked. We talk a lot as a chorus. We talked about what it means to want to do our best, but not at the expense of anyone being uncomfortable or not having fun. We talked about being our own bratty selves on stage. We talked about what it means to be “Bella Nova” authentic. We’re probably going to execute a less-than-perfect plan, but our goals have nothing to do with being perfect. They have more to do with experiencing this journey as a family.

There are a lot of Bella Novas who are probably sipping some wine and going to bed early tonight. Sunday’s rehearsal was killer in so many good ways. We were nervous, until we weren’t, and now we’re cruising toward Area 3 contest with the Bella Nova spirit, complete with half-baked choreo, a few surprises up our sleeves, and a stronger bond than ever before.

That, in our opinion, is #winning.

At Bella Nova, we talk a lot about the “Bella Nova spirit.” What exactly does that mean? We put it in graphic form in an attempt to capture it.