Welcome to the DCS Napa-New Zealand Project.
At this writing, I’m just back from Napa, California where I met with friends and past students to lay the groundwork for our pre-game retreat next summer. We’ll have three intensive days of rehearsal along with three concerts and a church service at our “home church” from 30 years ago. They are thrilled we’re coming, and needless to say, I’m feeling quite nostalgic about going home again.
The header pic is from the chapel at Mont Lasalle, a working monastery and retreat center nestled amidst the vineyards in the hills above Napa. My high school Chamber Singers used to do a concert there every spring, and we have a tentative booking to sing there on the evening of July 3rd. It’s a wonderful (and very forgiving acoustic) with a 3-5 second decay that should be an excellent venue for our first time out.
As noted in your acceptance letter, Amy and I are working diligently to lock in airfares as those posted for our dates are a good bit higher than I had anticipated. I am also giving serious consideration to having the entire choir spend the first night in a youth hostel in San Francisco. (You would be able to upgrade to hotel accommodations for a nominal fee, should you so desire.) This would add a great deal of flexibility to coordinating arrival times as you can ride the metro (BART) into the city from SFO any time during to day. Watch for updates on that.
In the meantime, Sarah has posted the (tentative) roster in the password protected area of the website. In the coming days, we’ll continue to populate this area with updates and information, and very soon, downloadable scores. The password is “DCS-NZ-2024” Please don’t share that with others as we don’t want to have posted scores available to the general public.
Finally, if you haven’t already completed your “Intention Form” I hope you will do so soon, even if your intention is to take more time to think about your decision. That will help us greatly in the planning process. If you have already decided and you’re ready to pull the lever, you can make your deposit here. Please note that the deposit amount hasn’t been updated from last year, so you’ll need to click “make additional payment” to pay the full deposit amount of $500. Once we receive your deposit, that sets the wheels in motion and we’ll start booking flights and hotels.
Future communications will come from this page, which allows you to go back and read previous posts as we release additional information. If you have questions in the meantime, you can always reach out to Amy Anderson for booking and payment information (amyander@udel.edu), Rachel Clark for questions about logistics on the ground (rachel@elevatevocalarts.org), or me about music and the meaning of life (pdhead@udel.edu) and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.
So very eager to hear this choir. So very excited about this project.
Look out WORLD CHOIR GAMES! Here we come!
pdh