The Set-Up
With the help of many, we transformed the cafeteria for our night of music and desserts.
I regret not getting more pictures of the table decorations, but above is an example of one of them. One of the Moms made beautiful playbills and had the wood shop teacher make wooden stands for them to go on each table. All of the musicals we performed from were represented on all the various tables.
One of the dads made signs to hang over the tables indicating which kind of dessert was at which table and the cute moms wore matching aprons from one of the mother's daughter's wedding. They planned ALL of that. I had hardly anything to do with the execution of serving the desserts that were purchased by the audience members.
The Desserts
Two of the mothers were responsible for the dessert donations we received. One mom called all over and got donations from The Do-Do in SLC, Costco, Sam's Club, Village Inn, and The Cheesecake Factory. Two days before the concert, another mother secured 150 desserts from Leslie's Bakery because of connections her family has with the owner. We lucked out!! We were able to keep almost 100% of the proceeds from the dessert sales.
The moms came armed with whipped cream and toppings to make the store bough cheesecake fancy (see above). These ladies were so impressive.
The Performers
What I would most love is to fill this blog post with pictures of my sweet students. They are the best part and this whole concert was about them. They looked beautiful and did so well. But, it's against my personal blogging policy to post pics of my kids so you'll have to just come to my next concert to see them :-).
The kids sang their music in three different sets: Rodgers and Hammerstein (including "Oklahoma" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl"); Disney (including "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" from Lion King); and "Classic Favorites" (including "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha and "If I Were a Rich Man," from Fiddler on the Roof, featuring one of my students on the violin). The kids ended with "For Good" from Wicked, which they dedicated to their former teacher who retired before they could say goodbye.
The kids sang their music in three different sets: Rodgers and Hammerstein (including "Oklahoma" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl"); Disney (including "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" from Lion King); and "Classic Favorites" (including "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha and "If I Were a Rich Man," from Fiddler on the Roof, featuring one of my students on the violin). The kids ended with "For Good" from Wicked, which they dedicated to their former teacher who retired before they could say goodbye.
One of my special guest performers at the concert was the father of one of my students. He sang, "Return to Pooh Corner." I loved watching the faces of all the audiences members as they smiled reminiscently and mouth along the words. He is incredibly talented and sounded fabulous.
Above is our show-stopper, Phaidra, the drama teacher at Highland and a good friend of mine. She was the featured performer of the night and completely stole the show. Everyone loved her! She performed a song called, "Gone to Nashville" from the musical Nunsense. It was hilarious and her vocals were killer.
A special thanks to Tessa Hendrickson for the bridesmaid dress we bought for her wedding but never used (we switched plans before the wedding). It has served me on several occasions, like tonight's concert.
I am so lucky to be friends with Emily. She is so talented and it has been so fun to collaborate over the years. I pre-student taught with her at Dixon and now she has been my accompanist twice both at Dixon and at Highland. We joked that once her cute kids are grown and she's back in the classroom, I will accompany for her while I raise mine :-).
I wasn't planning on talking at all at the concert, but at the very end I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't take a second to thank all the parents and teachers who made this night possible. I have written about 20 thank you notes so far and am still not finished. They blew me away with their unfailing support.
The Audience:
The kids did an amazing job of spreading the word. The place was packed! We probably had about about 400 guests. We sold about that many dessert tickets at $5 each, bringing in about $2,000. Our expenses were around $500 (accompanist, dress hemming, decorations, extra desserts, fundraiser incentives, etc.), so we walked away with $1500. While this couldn't take us on a trip to New York by any means, the concert definitely served it's purpose for this year. Our principal asked us to fundraise without going door to door and using the talents of the kids in the choir and that's what we tried to do. We couldn't charge for the singing (due to copyright laws) so we sold donated desserts.
I hit the jackpot when Heavenly Father assigned families. My mom came all the way from California just because she knew how much I needed her there for my very first high school concert. Christina and Jer broke away from their extremely busy lives to come to SLC and be there for me. It meant so much!
My dear friends from my ward came to support me. It was these friends who lovingly told me after the concert that two of the songs I included in my Disney set weren't actually Disney (Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Shrek). I was mortified. That's quite a glaring error.
Speaking of amazing families, my grandma and aunt came! Having them there meant the world.
Jer took some profile shots when we were unaware. Can you tell my sister and I are related?
If you look closely, you can see Sister Payne behind me! She and Caytlin surprised me. I had no idea they were coming! It was so fun.
Special thanks to Daniel, who I didn't get a picture with, for taking half of these pictures (my mom and Jer got the other half). He has been such a rock for me the past two years. I can count on his support and help for anything.
While I can come up with a million and two things I wish I had done differently as a director, I can't complain. Thanks to the support of so many, we pulled it off and began a new tradition at Highland that I look forward to continuing in the years to come!