Landscape Photos from Summer 2009

UCA "Sleep" video

Here's a link to a YouTube video of the Utah Chamber Artists singing Eric Whitacre's "Sleep."


Eric Whitacre's "Sleep" by Utah Chamber Artists

Video Tribute from Chorus America awards presentation for the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award

http://youtu.be/HvgKVVzTuZ0

Utah Chamber Artists receive 2011 Dale Warland Singers Commision Award

Read the full-length press release.

How right I was!

Just found out this afternoon that Performance Today will air UCA's performance of C.V. Stanford's "The Blue Bird" tomorrow. I thought we would eventually get something of ours on the show.

More Guppies

I have been inundated with Guppy babies. There are about a dozen guppy babies in the main tank and I transferred a couple more to the smaller tank, in which there are now six fry. I may have gotten more than I bargained for with this guppy breeding experiment!

Guppy Update

Here's the latest with the guppy fry: At one point I counted six fry in the main tank. A few days later there were only four fry in the tank and I confirmed several times over a period of a few days that there were only four fry. Tonight I discovered a fifth fry in the tank that appears much smaller and darker than the other four. I don't know if it was just barely born or if it has been there a couple days already. There is a female that looks like she is going to give birth any day now. Perhaps this was just her first with more to come. Meanwhile, the four fry in the small tank are doing just fine and seem to be growing as fast as those in the main tank. The first batch of fry are almost three weeks old now. It looks to me like the 3-week-olds in the main tank are no longer in danger of being eaten by the adults.

Guppy Fun

Because I haven't had choir rehearsals the past few weeks I had to pick up another hobby. I have chosen to breed guppies! I had a couple males and a female or two already, so I bought four more females on Saturday. I read that it's best to have a ratio of three females to every male so no one female gets picked on too much by the males. One of the new females was obviously due to give birth any day when I bought her. Well, she gave birth to several fry yesterday while I was at the fish store!

I was debating between leaving them in the big tank where they could get eaten by the big fish or moving them into a smaller tank. I ended up hedging my bets. I figured I would have a hard time catching all the fry in the big tank anyway, but surely I could catch a few and put them in the smaller tank for protection, which I did. As of a few minutes ago, I have four fry in the small tank and at least four fry in the main tank as well. It's fun to see them evade the big fish by hiding and swimming away. I'm told that they won't be big enough to be truly "safe" for 3-4 weeks. Wow. I'm amazed at their survival instincts so far. But when there are six big fish actively trying to hunt you down 24 hours a day, you can't afford to make a wrong move! We'll see how it goes for both groups of fry!

Inauguration Gig

We sang for the inauguration of the Governor Gary Herbert on Jan 3. We rehearsed all morning to learn Dr. Bradford's new arrangement of "America the Beautiful" and had to re-learn Copland's "The Promise of Living" which is a fairly difficult piece. Then we stood on the steps for the entire 45-minute program (except for Melissa who, as you can see, was feeling lightheaded and needed to take a seat for a while).

Christmas Concert

The Utah Chamber Artists Christmas concert was held on Monday, December 6, 2010 at Libby Gardner Hall on the U of U campus. The hall was sold out and the occasion was festive to say the least. Here's a track of our conductor, Barlow Bradford's arrangement of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."