Canadian Showtime: The Joe Era!! (10-Oct-2018)

It’s all about Team play! It’s all about growth, development and fine tuning of the skills we’ve acquired over the years under the expert direction of our former master director 700! It’s about adopting the A level singer’s mentality and pushing the envelope to achieve our goals. It’s about re-energizing and adopting new rehearsal practices that encourages – and yes, demands - personal accountability and commitment. It’s all about Team play!!

Joe Connelly, long time CSC coach and now our chorus director extraordinaire, has taken us on quite the journey the last few months! New music – a lot of new music - new opportunities, new rehearsal format, new methods of communicating, new and catchy names for our various leaders and team players, ie. FADS (fabulous assistant directors – we have 3); vocal quads (sections); quad leaders (section leaders), etc.! He is encouraging us to come up with more – and we are working on it! But most of all he has brought his boundless and infectious energy, incredible barbershop knowledge, musicianship, hilarious sense of humour and of great important, an encouraging and positive energy to the room. He is empowering us to not only be stronger and more confident performers but also encourages us all to share in the responsibility of running this magnificent ship. Be it a small administrative role or a large one, many hands will make for lighter work!! Many new volunteers taking on new tasks! Team play!!! He wants us to grow in numbers as well and we are now 90 strong! I have to say, the last several months have been fun – just a whole lot of fun!

Canadian Showtime is a generous chorus and is always looking for ways to give back to the community. Last year we chose to support the University of Ottawa Hearth Institute / Canadian Women’s Heart Health Centre whereby our members donated 50/50 winnings to this worthy cause. Last month, a group of our singers were honoured to sing at this incredible organization’s 12th Annual Jeanne Fuller Red Dress Charity Golf tournament held at Loch March in Kanata. Not easy to hush a large gathering of women focused on the ball but our singers managed to do just that. We look forward to more opportunities to support this incredible organization in the future!

Terrific representation of our CSC!

With a view to perform at sporting events, Joe had his good friend Jay Giallombardo arrange the Canada and USA National Anthems for us! Both are fresh and exciting arrangements – we love them! Our first opportunity to show them off was on September 30th at an Ottawa Fury FC and Bethlehem Steel FC game at the TD Stadium in Ottawa. It was a roaring success!! We became twitter and Instagram sensations with raving reviews and comments like “Amazing, please come back” “You were brilliant, hope to see you @REDBLACKS too!” “We just need #Fury to play as well as the anthem choir did their job!” “Now we need to know how we can hear more of them. Like where are they performing…”. “You all did SO great! Thanks for performing for us today”. It was a chilly day but we appear to have warmed the hearts of at least 5,000 soccer fans that day! Thrilled that this has opened the door to other performance opportunities as we have indeed been invited to sing at a Redblacks game in the near future! Have to chuckle that we were mistakenly introduced as Canadian Showtime Circus though, but this was no freak show! Just freakin’ amazing!

Pre-game selfie with some of our fabulous singers!!

The fun continues with a few more fun performances coming up.

First up is Oktoberfest. We’ve been getting in the mood by doing the polka during physical warm up the last couple of weeks. It is easy! Oktoberfest, Canadian Showtime style, will be at the Ron Kolbus Center, Britannia, on Friday, October 26. Check for details on our website at http://canadianshowtimechorus.com

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sing a cappella barbershop music but shied away from it because of inexperience or because you don’t have the time to commit fully to it? Well do we have a deal for you! We are excited to invite you to sing in our holiday chorus and JOIN us on stage on December 2 at our Holiday Gala and Performance. All you need to do is attend a couple of rehearsals to learn a couple of holiday songs and you are in. Take the leap and join us! Bring your family and friends along to see you shine! It’s An Affair to Remember!!

This fun filled evening will be held at Salo San Marco Event Center on Preston on Sunday, December 2nd and will feature us and the wonderful Peter Liu & The Pollcats. Swing dancing, casino, performances … what more could one ask for!! Promotional material will soon be available on our website. Keep checking in for details. http://canadianshowtimechorus.com

This blogger and Joe will be at International Contest in St. Louis, MO this coming week. Joe is a coach in demand and we are excited to share him with so many other choruses from around the world. But he’s ours and that makes our hearts happy.

Thanks for your interest in us! If this has piqued your curiosity, come out and visit or attend one of our performances. This is more than a hobby for us – it’s a passion. Let us share it with you!

With a singing heart,

JD Crowe

CSC Blogger