Reunion concert to enrich school concerts here this month
by Dan McClelland
The holiday concert series in local schools this month will be enriched by a new event featuring the alumni from many past musicals and concerts here. It’s a power-packed Reunion Concert presented by the Red & Black Players. Those talented musicians performing are past performers on the high school stage here, who are now in college or in work careers.
Students of the local school district will be in concert three nights next week, entertaining parents and family members.
On Tuesday the high school chorus and orchestra will perform in the high school auditorium, beginning at 6:30p.m. The next night, Wednesday, the fourth and fifth graders at L.P. Quinn are all set to perform at the elementary school at 6:30p.m. The third in the three-night concert series will be on Thursday when the middle school students of sixth, seventh and eighth grades will delight the audience at the high school auditorium, beginning at 6:30p.m.
The next week, on Wednesday, December 21, is when many who have performed on stage in the musicals and dramas of the Red and Black Players will be coming home early for Christmas for the big Reunion Concert.
While there won’t be an admission charge, the event is actually a fundraiser for needed supplies and equipment that the Red & Black Players generally provides its young musicians.
Microphones and head sets for the young performers are in short supply and so all proceeds from the concert will be to buy more of those, according to Liz Cordes, who will be directing the concert and who with her husband George formed the Red & Black Players over seven years ago. George and Liz are huge boosters of musicals and drama every year in local schools.
Donations of every size are most welcome and together they will go a long ways to helping our students this year and in future years when they are performing on the school stage, she told the Free Press this past week.
Some of these sophisticated microphone/receiver units run $300 or more each.
If the event can produce $1,500 to $2,000 in donations upwards of a half a dozen units can be purchased for young Red & Black players to use when they perform here. Right now, when the company performs plays and musicals, headsets are borrowed from the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, which Mr. Cordes has been closely associated with over the years. There’s never enough of them for every singer or performer in a production, and so typically only the leads are loaned one.
What began as a comment on Facebook, has blossomed into a full-blown production that evening over two dozen singers ready to perform solos, duets and ensemble numbers.
Some singers will perform to track music, while others will be accompanied by Mrs. Cordes on piano.
Some of the alumni members already signed up for the show include: Jenna Switzer, Abby St. Onge, Mitchell Baker, Emileigh Smith, Saide Johnson, Bryce Davison, Allison Sexton, Kirsten Denis, Breanna Trombley, Nolan Savage, Stephanie Fortune, Annachristi Cordes, Kendall Davison, Danielle LaMere, Mitchell Jensen, Johnathan Jauron, Sophia Martin, Karen Bujold, Billie Gadway, Andrew Trudeau, Lowden Pratt, Samantha Brickey, Redia Spada, George Cordes and Laura McGowan.