The rain stopped and the parade ended at the Christmas Tree. We sang a few Christmas Songs and invited everyone to learn and sing the Peace Chant. The audience participated and enjoyed the harmony. Dignitaries lined up, importantly, in front of the tree and the was a grand chorus of "Happy Tree Lighting Langley" with Santa Clause and the orgnanziers. The tree was lit, and we continued to sing our Christmas repertoire. We enjoyed our final performance of the year. Now for the Christmas party!

It appears that Dianne has suffered an accident! Boxes and boxes of poinsettias arrived at her home to be distributed to Soundscape members. It looks serious, but I think she has found her way out of her floral dilemma without too much damage to either herself or to the colourful plants. I think the situation stemmed to a little too much back-petaling, don't you?

Fifteen members of Soundscape arrived at Surrey Central City Mall at 11:00 am and prepared ourselves to perform. There were three performances and the first was outside with the whirl of fans and the rattle of generators competing with our sound system. Santa Claus arrived and we looked on, then mounted the risers. The performance was a good one, the audience small but delighted. We had brochures to hand out and they went to people who expressed and interest in joining or hiring us. As soon as the performance ended we moved quickly to an indoor location and did our 30 minute set again. More people wanted brochures. In the final set at 3:00 pm, the group was singing confidently, well warmed and feeling more in the groove.

Our performance was impressive. As a group and to a person, we were involved and engaged in the performance and funneled our attention right past and through the director to the audience. There were appropriate expressions all around, and everyone appeared to have a good time.

Soundscape had a great time singing at the Surrey Share Fair event on Oct 19. We met and warmed up by learning four songs with the same length and harmonic rhythm:

1. Won't You Sing a Simple Melody
2. See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have
3. How much is that Doggie in the Window
4. Me Mither and Fither were Irish

We learned them by rote and sang them individually, together and backwards! Then we invited people listening near by to join us and had a lot of fun at it!  We also performed some of our repertoire songs for the people and the resultant applause was enthusiastic. All of us had a great time and so did the listeners.

Quickly following up on a tip from a friend of Lynn P, Soundscape's Planning and Organizing Group quickly put the paperwork together to support applying for an Arts Council grant from the City of Surrey. Our submission was accepted and we were invited to meeting to make our case for the grant. If we are successful, we will use the $5000 being offered to develop our own member's skills, increase the group's membership, and increase our activity in the City of Surrey! Dianne H, Cathey B. and Renee B. went to the meeting to further our bid for the grant.