Thomas J. West Music

Yesterday, I shared one side-project that has kept me from writing my typical blog posts this fall. Today, I will regail you with the other project that has been keeping me busy.

Last weekend was the grand unveiling of a project that took shape unexpectedly in late April. In addition to my music teaching career and online music explorations, I also have a passion for close harmony singing. Up until April that passion had always been recreational. Now, I am a part-time professional vocalist with KeyStone A Cappella, a sextet performing popular music of the last 50 years.

This comes at the right time. Personally, my sons are getting older and less dependent. It also comes at a time when I need a new challenge in my life as a performing musician. It's been far too long since I've performed regularly, and this opportunity will fit into my busy schedule. Culturally, interest in contemporary a cappella is at an all time high with television programs like Glee and The Sing-Off. It was the latter show that brought KeyStone together. In late April, the producers of The Sing-Off announced open casting for season 3. This led to a flurry of arranging and rehearsing that resulted in a 10-minute audition video to submit to the show.

Ultimately, we were not cast for Season 3, but coming together for the audition video was the catalyst we neeeded to get rolling. We took the rest of the summer off, as most of us were involved as performers with The A Cappella Project - Philadelphia. We started back up in September, reading new charts and preparing for our first public performances, which took place on December 17.

Fitting a professional performing ensemble into six busy full-time schedules has been a challenge. We basically are rehearsing two nights a month and  learning our parts on our own. We have two performances lined up so far in 2012 and are definitely looking for more.

So, check out our labor of love at the official KeyStone website. Also, "like" us on Facebook and https://twitter.com/keystonevocals" target="_blank">follow us on Twitter. Be sure to check out samples of our work. And by all means, if you know of any performance opportunities for us, let me know.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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