Monica Gray (Photo by Bob Shay)
Cheri Emahiser
It’s going to happen. We will honor our veterans, just not on the date we planned. The DesertView Theater has rescheduled our concert for Friday, November 6 and Sunday, November 8. If you bought tickets for our Lest We Forget concert, expect the DesertView Performing Arts Center to inform you of their cancellation ticketing policy.
We choose to sing and we all practice and show up at rehearsals so we can sing well and connect to our community with our voices. We love entertaining you, our neighbors and friends, and we appreciate your support. Substantial ticket revenue from sold seats is vital to the financial health of our organization.
We’ve long taken pride in being a primarily volunteer organization. Many of the SaddleBrooke Singers perform vital functions to keep us in existence. Monica Gray is one of our hard-working volunteers. Frankly, we would have a very difficult time finding another individual able to accomplish all the tasks she has so easily assumed over the past four years. Monica is our music librarian, our new music acquisition ordering person, and overseer of our rented storage unit filled with file cabinets of music, stage décor, costumes, props and boxes containing who knows what. At the beginning of each season, Monica retrieves music from storage, orders new pieces of music, and gets volunteers to help collate music packets for all the singers.
We count on Monica to outfit us for our performances with the ties and scarves of various colors she has tucked away. She is the person who can always come up with a clever theme for our stage decorations. The gorgeous sets you’ve seen at previous shows are most often the result of her creativity and ability to adeptly involve the rest of us in a joint effort to produce the beautiful stage décor.
In addition, I don’t believe there are many sopranos in SaddleBrooke with Monica’s vocal range. Did you hear a high “B” flat? That’s more than two octaves above the lowest note Monica sings; the “D” below middle “C.” Only the most exceptional of singers have a range of nearly three octaves! If you’ve attended our concerts, you’ve heard Monica’s gorgeous voice hit every note perfectly.
Not only does Monica volunteer for us, but for the past 12 years she has volunteered at the Pima Animal Care Center with the SaddleBrooke Wags & Walkers, walking dogs and mentoring new volunteers. This is a very meaningful activity for her; she feels strongly about the good treatment and well-being of animals. I’m sure the dogs love being at the end of her leash as well.
If you want to spend some time singing with Monica, consider joining the SaddleBrooke Singers. Rehearsals begin again in September. No professional experience or audition is required. Contact Claudia Kistler at 520-306-2113 or visit www.saddlebrookesingers.org for more information.