Wow! What a weekend for the Bella Nova sisterhood! Once again, we had the opportunity to share the stage with our brothers in harmony, the Fairfax Jubil-Aires. In addition to sharing a director, the Fairfax gents are truly our partners in crime. They have been so supportive of Bella Nova throughout our journey and they’ve welcomed us to take part in their annual show for the last several years. As partners, we work hard to fill the seats in the auditorium and we sure had a successful outcome to our efforts this year. The cherry on top was featured quartet, Route 1; those guys are simply awesome.

Our numbers were a bit light this year. So many of our sisters were taken down by bugs, the flu, and other obligations! We were missing about a third of the chorus but the remaining members sure brought their “big girl” voices! In the first show, we knew our sound was solid from the first few lines of the opening song. By the time we got to our contest ballad, “Secondhand White Baby Grand,” we had settled in for a fantastic ride–we were connected to each other, and we were hanging on Richard’s fingertips. The ballad was probably the best we’ve ever sung it. It was magic. We could see it all over Richard’s face! And when we later made our way to the lobby to greet our audience, we were blown away by the comments and feedback we got about our set! What an uplifting experience.

We also need to offer a shout-out to our first official Bella Nova quartet, ReVoiced. These ladies always do us proud, but we were particularly proud to have them step out from the risers and represent our chorus with two songs during the show. Not only are they singing better and better with each performance, but it’s clear the audience loves them as much as we do. And best of all…. Saturday was Grace’s 15th birthday. What 15 year old do you know who spends her 15th birthday singing barbershop all day long!?! Happy birthday, beautiful Grace. We love you.

In between the two shows, our assistant director, Kris Adams, taught us some Pitch Perfect mash-ups to keep our voices warmed up and ready to go. A very fun way to pass the time!

All but one song of our show set were arranged by Larry Wright, who just happened to be in the audience for both performances. He told Richard that we did him proud and even elicited a misty eye during the ballad. There is no higher honor for us than to bring our brilliant arranger’s work to life. Larry–you bring the soul to Bella Nova’s music. Thank you.

To top it all off, we had our regular rehearsal on Sunday because, hey, contest is coming! We’re bound and determined to roll out our new uptune so there is no rest for the weary (or wicked, as some might say). We kept it short; we were all BEYOND tired. But we made great progress, warming up with our Pitch Perfect mash-up from the day before, and working hard to refine our choreo moves. We opened our rehearsal to the “interwebs” once again with Periscope and Queen Lindsay “stopped by to visit” for a while! Hi, Lindsay!!! Best of all–a woman from our afternoon show’s audience came by as a visitor and left as a NEW MEMBER!!! We were so excited to meet her and open our arms to another Bella Nova sister!

All and all, another fantastic experience in the Bella Nova journey. XOXO!