Sunday, March 22, 2015

West Point Glee Club Comes to Portland


Bill and I went to hear the West Point Glee Club sing last night.  Such a fun evening.  I actually did some shopping in Lake Oswego in the late afternoon and then Bill and I had dinner before heading over to the concert.  The Randall family in Portland paid for the cadets to come to the West Coast for a tour of California and Oregon during their spring break.  Nike made their Tiger Woods Auditorium available for the concert to be held.  Bill and I got to Nike fairly early.  About an hour before the concert.  I had never been there so I wanted to walk around a bit.  It is a beautiful campus. All or most of the office buildings are on a man made lake in the middle of the campus.  The buildings are connected with covered porticos and the walkways are lined with bronze plaques of sports greats.  It was fun looking at the lake, the Canada geese and ducks and seeing if we could recognize the various sports names on the plaques.


The various trees and bushes were in full bloom.  I enjoyed coming across this Japanese garden along the way.


The glee club was fantastic.  It was a wonderful concert.  They started off with old West Point songs, Civil War era military songs and hymns.  The first song was "The Corps" and all the grads stood for that as they all should.


The next part of the concert was what they call their "fun" portion.  Their motto is "No fun without music.  No music without fun."  The women had a song that they did on their own.


The next part was more modern.  And by that I mean--1960's and 1970's.  But very fun with some drumming and soloists.  And an acapella men's chorus doing tunes like "My Girl".


The director found out quite by accident that these two fellas sing bluegrass and have added a bluegrass song to the concert.  They are both from South Dakota and have fun making jokes about how they never find anyone where they go that have lived in South Dakota.  They sang "Good Old Mountain Dew" and everyone loved it.  The director said that they didn't think they were very good.  But I would never have thought that.  They were fantastic.


When they sang "Army Blue", all the firsties came to the front.  They are looking forward to putting on their Army Blues in just a few months.


The audience participation part was at the end.  They sang the Armed Forces medley and all those who had served stood during their portion of the medley.  There were a few Navy, Air Force and Marine vets in the audience but being that we were at a West Point event--of course the majority were Army.  And when it came time to sing the Alma Mater, they invited all the old grads to come up on stage to sing it with them.


They ended the night with an encore--"Fight On Old Army Team" and a big old loud "Beat Navy!" cheer.

It was such a great night.  Always wonderful to get connected with our West Point and Army roots.

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