Bella a Cappella

Last spring, I was invited to join the prestigious Bella Coola women's a cappella choir, called, aptly, Bella a Cappella. With my joining, the group is now a nine-voice choir. Members include a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, 4 teachers and 2 secretaries, and it's a nice cross-section of women from the community. Of course, we are all non-native, a consideration up here where half the community is native. The choir rehearses weekly, though when there are gigs coming up, we rehearse twice a week. All our repertoire is memorized, which initially, was daunting, but actually makes a huge difference, as the quality of the performance is much better. When I joined the group, they were singing barbershop type arrangements, known as "Sweet Adeline" when it's women singing. I have helped to expand the repertoire of the group by getting different types of music sent up from Vancouver because I think just singing the barbershop arrangements is limiting to the potential of the group. So now our repertoire includes renaissance music sung in Latin, a Serbian gypsy song sung in Serbian, some jazz and show tunes, South African spirituals, as well as Sweet Adeline arrangements. Our most recent gig was at the Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair held in November. For this event, we dressed for the season, in our usual 'all black', along with Santa hats and red gloves. We sang Santa Baby, Winter Wonderland, Java Jive, and Nishka Banja (our Serbian gypsy tune). We were well received, and we are way out ahead, in terms of musical accomplishment, I think, of our choir competition, the Bella Coola men's choir, and the Bella Coola Community Choir!!!