By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Back by popular demand, the Senior Moments Chorus has united for the first time since before COVID! Set up through the Walpole Council on Aging, new and existing members were welcomed back for their first official practice this past Wednesday, September 6th.
The room was packed with excited seniors ready to begin this amazing singing journey again. Welcoming everybody into practice was Gerri Russo, Manager and Event Coordinator of this chorus. Joining her was newly appointed director, Linda Saripalli.
For six years, Russo has had the honor and privilege of coordinating this incredible chorus of seniors. What started out as a group with six to eight people, has now turned into a whopping twenty four. They are always thrilled to accept new members, even if they have no experience with music. All will be able to learn and join in on the fun!
A couple weeks before this first practice, these lovely ladies held a Meet and Greet for all who were interested in joining. The turnout was fantastic and inevitably led to many more seniors wanting to be a part of this chorus. Russo went on to state, “We’ve got a lot of new members that just came through the open house, about four or five new people. And some of our regulars aren’t here just yet but all together we have about twenty four people now. We usually perform at rehab centers, nursing homes, things like that. I have set up a Christmas show at the Walpole Public Library for about mid December. That is open to the public and free to them. That’s usually a big thing for us.”
Since they have only just started their practices, this Senior Moments Chorus does not have any other specific shows set up just yet. Additionally, they are still working on their music set list. When asked what kind of songs they sing, Russo stated, “We sing a little bit of everything, it all depends really.”
Saripalli, who will go on to officially create their set list, mentioned that it is also still a work in progress. She specifically stated, “I have tried to match songs but it is always hard to match songs when you don’t know the singers. So this is a work in progress. We will add songs, take away any songs we need to, but either way we will work this out. Our goal is that it will take us a few weeks to get back into form, work on our musicianship a little bit, and then we can plan performances as we go. That is important to us and that is what we want to do, to go and share our music with other people.”
It is easy to see the joy that all these seniors have while singing with each other and finally being back together once again. Here is to a great year ahead and some amazing performances to come!
