Holiday Party - December 19, 2024
We all congregated at Rhonda's home for our year end holiday party. Lively conversations were being pursued in every main floor room -- until the pot luck hors d'oeuvres started to get put out in the kitchen! They were a meal in themselves. Still, we later sat down to dinner at Rhonda's long dinner table and enjoyed a variety of main course dishes followed by desserts. The table was festively decorated and each of us even had a Christmas cracker to pull with our neighbour before getting at the riddle and the paper hat inside. Rhonda was presented with a lovely dried flower arrangement as a thank you for her wonderful hosting, and Alana was given a token of our appreciation for her dedication and hard work towards making us better! Assel surprised each member of the chorus with a beautiful, hand made, glass tree ornament, painted with a musical theme. And a number of members promised to share recipes for their pot luck items. Thank you to all the Accolades who help make our social events so fun and memorable.
Holiday Chorus Concert - December 5, 2024
At the beginning of November, the chorus welcomed 13 enthusiastic women who took up our invitation to come out and learn some holiday songs with us in four-part harmony. A number of our guests even took on the additional challenge of learning a harmony part, rather than the lead, to our holiday songs. After four rehearsal evenings, we put on a performance featuring the Toronto Accolades and highlighting this year's "Holiday Chorus". Special guest performers were the North Toronto Songbirds children's choir and the terrific men's quartet, Constructive Criticism. The venue at Earl Bales Community Centre was filled to capacity by an enthusiastic audience of friends and family of chorus members and our special holiday chorus singers.
June Party and Installation Ceremony - June 20, 2024
On this first day of summer, we gathered at Judy G's home to celebrate another fun and successful year for the Accolades. The most important elements, conversaton and food, were in abundance, the latter thanks to our Social Convenor, Fatima, who organized our pot luck supper of finger foods and desserts.
After dinner, it was time for our Installation Ceremony, to thank past Board members and install our new ones for the 2024-25 year. Former member, Ilona Rodos, was invited to be our Installing Officer, while Wendy Shibata served as our Membership Representative. It was also time for a few awards. Alana won the Best Attendance Award for 2023-24 and Beth received a certificate to recognize her 25 years of membership in the chorus.
After the official part of the evening was completed, we drew names to divvy up the content of the goodie bags we won at AC&C for best table centrepieces at the Saturday Moonglow dinner. But that wasn't the end of the gifts. We had six members celebrating their decade birthdays this year, so they were also feted with cards, gifts and well wishes. Happy Decade Birthday to Marilyn C., Beth, Ingrid, Normi, Su and Gail M.
It wouldn't have been an Accolades gathering without a little bit of singing to end the evening, including a heartfelt rendition of "Can You Feel The Love Tonight"!
Area Contest and Convention - May 24 to 26, 2024
The End of May brought our annual Area 5 Contest and Convention, held at the Sheraton Parkway North Toronto. After watching a highly competitive Quartet Contest on Friday evening, we were eager to get on stage in the Chorus Contest the following day. Our chorus, which included five new members to the Accolades, was thrilled with their performance, moving up 46 points from last year to receive the Most Improved Chorus Award. Though we came just short of qualifying for Internationals in November, we were also awarded the Audrey Borsos Memorial Award for the chorus achieving the highest non-qualifying score of the contest.
Later that evening, we gathered in the Grand Ballroom for dinner and entertainment, shedding our "Sunshine" song package costumes to become Dalmation puppies from our chorus chosen movie theme "101 Dalmations". Our singing of "Cruella de Vil" was a hit, as we scared little puppies ended up turning on Cruella (our director, Alana). And, at the end of the evening, the Accolades won a couple of gift baskets for the best table centrepieces, also based on our movie theme. Definitely a day to celebrate!
