Holiday Season with YGC!

Yale Glee Club always manages to show its best attributes come holiday season. Maybe it's the accumulation of beloved annual events that we look forward to every year, or maybe it's the long sought relief we need during finals prep. Regardless, some of my fondest memories of the Yale Glee Club (and I'm sure this is true for many others as well) come from this festive and incredibly joyful period in our lives.

Last year as a freshman in the Yale Glee Club, the trip to New York was the event that forever sealed my utter adoration for YGC. I had already been completely convinced of YGC's awesomeness at the beginning of the year with Beethoven's Ode to Joy. I mean, honestly, what music lover wouldn't be completely brimming with excitement with that experience? But the combination of being in New York City, one of my favorite places, in the famed Yale Club with such a warm and welcoming audience made losing a whole day of studying (yes, I was and still am obsessive over excessive studying) completely and utterly worth while.

And let's not forget the most unique and amazing experience of all: the Yale train ride back home. The most enjoyable of all our revelries arrives year after year and without fail brings the most shenanigans and contagious joy out of each YGC member. It's a time to let the Glee run free! Without a doubt, in those short two hours confined on a moving train, I have had more fun and laughs that any other night had at Yale. The obnoxiously bad singing that at the time sounded like God's gift to man, the gawking of unfortunate passengers that stuck it through with us the entire time, and the joy. O the joy! It's a time for memory makings, and it's that time of year that everyone who can recall that night looks forward to year after year. Happy Holidays YGC! I can't wait to enjoy 2 1/2 more years with all of you all!

-Lisa Zhang

A Glimpse of our train ride experience - Picture courtesy of Kyle Picha

Ten Songs of Yale you didn't know about

Bram Wayman '09 delves into the depths of songbooks past. The views shared here in no way represent the official opinion of the YGC Blog nor the YGC... & c. & c. & c.* Though clear favorites stand the test of time, and the old song books of Yale are full of the high stupidity of yesteryear, a few gems that aren't often — if ever — sung today stand out for me. Some of these songs are beautiful, some hilarious, and some downright offensive, but they all deserve a second look, and I'm not convinced all of them should have fallen out of use. I'm no expert on the history of Yale songs, and have only picked from a few books, but here are ten songs of Yale that still bring a smile to my face. 1. "Old Tom Wilson." TTBB. One of Barty's cleverest arrangements, this piece is a song from the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky. It features vocal banjos, vocal beer-chugging that gets longer each time the jug goes around, lyrics such as "Big fat ga...

SPRING TOUR DAY 1: San Diego

The first stop on our tour was to sunny San Diego! We drove there after a night in LA, stopping on the way to reflect in the breathtaking Self-Realization Fellowship Gardens in Encinitas, and then to sink our toes into the sand for the first time at Coronado Island. Ashby Cogan '14 writes about our first concert of tour: After a couple hours soaking up the sun and ensuring a prosperous quarter for the MooTime Creamery, the Glee Club boarded the buses to the First Presbyterian Church of San Diego for rehearsal and joint concert with the Whiffenpoofs. We speedily rehearsed our program, which included many pieces we had not sung in a while. Among them, terrifyingly, was a 24-part canon we had not performed since December. With fewer than fifteen minutes to review it we ironed out our missed entrances and proceeded through the program. Pre-concert energy levels varied—personally I felt like the jetlag monster had just scraped me off the bottom of its shoe—but as we got ...

Vuvuzelas @ Harvard

On Friday November 19th, the members of the Yale Glee Club traveled to Cambridge, MA for our annual joint concert with our counterparts from Harvard. The concert is always the day before the big Yale-Harvard football game ("The Game"), so rivalry runs high. During the lead-up to the 2010 Game, there had been much ado about the possibility that both Yale and Harvard fans would be armed with vuvuzelas during the contest (the powerful plastic horns were eventually banned ). During our football medley, we found a way to get in on the fun in B-flat : John Clayton '13 juggles Yale vuvuzelas during "Lord Jeffrey Amherst Douma" The Yale Vuvuzela Consort (Mari Oye '11, Rebecca Trupin '11, Jason Perlman '11, Dylan Morris '11), with a portrait of its spiritual leader YGC alumna Kaley Sullivan '10 gets in on the fun More photo fun from the Harvard Concert: "The saddest tale we have to tell" — YGCers mourning the fact that we have to grad...

Something Auditioning This Way Comes

“Good Morning” from Singing in the Rain is blasting off President Emily Howell’s computer. The door opens. She hits pause. Officers rush to seats in the Glee Club Office, stow half-eaten bagels under chairs, and try to look semi-official and yet not intimidating to freshmen. “Something Auditioning This Way Comes,” says Emily. I can’t shake the feeling I’m in a reality show. There’s one chair in the center of the room. Kids from West Virginia, South Africa, California, Vietnam, and Long Island are coming in one at a time to say hey, shuffle their feet, and talk music at Yale. As a cheat sheet to those of you planning to audition in future who may be reading the Glee Club Blog, I offer a set of possible questions you should study up on. We’ll answer some of them ourselves, as a sneak preview of the new officer bios to be posted Monday. Ahem. Q: If you could build a house out of any unconventional material, what would it be? A: “Ice cream sandwiches. They’re kind of like bricks and woul...

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