Dickinson County Community Chorus


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Features
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Congratulations, bravo, and thank you, Chorus!
For all six of your terrific performances this summer.

Video excerpts for Dickinson County Community Chorus.

To give you an idea of what you looked and sounded like at Thursday’s Kingsford performance, here are three video excerpts from the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, 16 July 2015, KHS Auditorium. DCCC / PMMF. Personal cellcam recordings for noncommercial, archival, educational, informational, acoustical, technological-learning, and related usages. Performers/participants, please use them for only the same reasons (no selling them for thousands of dollars each). I’m posting the excerpts to a YouTube miscellaneous account because of their size; it’s easier to store, refer to, share, and access them at YouTube.

Please pardon the jiggle, wobble, sway, and bounce. I had no stand for the camera and nothing to rest my arms on. My arms began to tremble often and noticeably from holding them above my head for any length of time. Thus, the movement.

Excerpt No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqGp2m_G5Rg 
Excerpt No. 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQe65sUVdbw 
Excerpt No. 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwz77uTGqXI 

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Passing of the baton.

Hogan to succeed Calo as Dickinson Chorus conductor

August 3, 2013
The Daily News    

IRON MOUNTAIN - After serving 20 years as principal conductor of the Dickinson County Community Chorus (DCCC), John Calo of Kingsford is retiring.

He will continue to serve as an assistant conductor and chorus member.

"It has been a privilege and a joy to direct the Dickinson County Community Chorus for the last 20 years," said Calo. "The excellence and dedication of chorus members, many of whom have sung as long as I have been directing, has allowed us to provide music of the highest standard for the many area residents who attend our concerts."

John Calo, left, who is retiring as principal conductor of the Dickinson County Community Chorus, passes his conductor’s baton on to the new principal conductor, Crystal Hogan. Calo will continue on in the chorus as an assistant conductor and chorus member.

Over the past 46 years, the DCCC has had three principal conductors.

The DCCC was founded in 1967 by Dan Croci, who directed the group until his death in 1981. Margaret "Magee" Johnson then directed the group from 1981 until her retirement in 1993. Calo has been directing the group since then.

Crystal Hogan, who has been the associate conductor of the chorus for several years, will now take over as principal conductor.

Hogan is also the choral music teacher at Breitung Township Schools.

Gail Vornkahl, who has served as the assistant conductor for the past few seasons, will now be the associate conductor. Vornkahl is also the choral music teacher at Iron Mountain Schools and the owner of Voice Works, where she gives voice lessons.

Each year, the DCCC presents three major performances: a Holy Week Lenten concert on the Tuesday of Holy Week, the "Music Under the Stars" outdoor concert in July, and the "Sounds of Christmas" concert on the Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving.


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Prairie Home Companion. I’ve been racking my brain for an accurate description of Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys. They’re every kind of music you ever heard on Prairie Home Companion, played as well or better. That and more. And last night with the additional pizzazz, fire, passion, and vitality of being live and in person.

I’ve also been referring to most of their music as hybrid – not only their playlist, but the individual pieces. Tons of original stuff. Fusion simply isn’t the correct word. Hybrid. Successful blends and mixes of jazz, bluegrass, folk rock, country, pop, Americana, folk, traditional, Cajun, blues, soul, R&B, influences of Harlem's Apollo, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Dixieland and rag and Big Easy subtleties, as well as spiritual, gospel, and broadly classical threads weaving wittingly or unwittingly but aptly, naturally, easily through the fabric of their music – you name it, blends and mixes of all genres and styles under the vast American pop culture’s sun, but uncontrived and unique (its own sound) in its results, and absolutely musically effective, pleasing, attractive. And more joyful than any one band’s music has a right to be! These four persons are excellent and versatile musicians with the additional great good fortune of perfect chemistry among them. Which means great good fortune for us, too, the listeners. Watch and listen for these players on a much, much broader stage in the near future. They’re special.

Thanks to them – Mark Lavengood, Joshua Rilko, Lindsay Lou Rilko, and P. J. George – for taking the time among their national and international tours to participate in Music in Our Schools Week at Breitung Township Schools and for providing an exceptional public concert for the community. Lindsay Lou Rilko once upon a time was Lindsay Petroff, one of my wife’s music students throughout middle school and high school and a 2005 graduate of Kingsford, and it was good to see her again, and to see her excelling.

Thanks, too, to the Kingsford High School Student Council and its advisor Ms. Kelly Bianco for their sponsorship, assistance, and support. To Mr. Ben Sherk, of course; and to the Music Boosters, sponsors as well, particularly Mr. John Reitvelt for his promotional help online. Thanks, also, to Ms. Crystal Hogan, the principal moving force behind Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys’ performances at Kingsford. And naturally thanks to the lively and appreciative audience who turned out for last night’s concert and enjoyed it immensely.

A final reminder: Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys perform twice today (Tuesday, March 11) at Kingsford, once for the middle school students only, once for the high school students only, in a capacity as educational and vocational as it is entertaining. To learn more about them and to listen to (or to obtain) some of their music, visit their website at http://www.lindsayloumusic.com/. Also visit iTunes for Lindsay Lou’s, Lindsay Lou and Joshua Rilko’s, and Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys' singles and albums, and watch for their upcoming releases. Get acquainted with them, too, on YouTube by searching Lindsay Lou, Lindsay Lou and Joshua Rilko, and Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys.

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Distinguished Invitation and Honor
to Kingsford Teacher and DCCC Director

The Wisconsin State Music Conference has selected Music – Creating Connections: A potpourri of techniques and ideas for the choral and general music teacher from 35 years of trial, error, and success, by veteran local teacher and musician Crystal Hogan, for presentation at a session of the same name for its annual conference in 2014. The Conference has invited Ms. Hogan to make the presentation there in Madison in October.

A resident of Iron Mountain since 1979, Crystal Hogan holds a B.A. degree in Music Education and an M.A. degree in Education. In 1982 she also received Kodaly Certification.

Next fall Ms. Hogan will begin her 36th year as principally a vocal, choral, exploratory, and general music instructor in the community – 20 years at Florence Public Schools in Wisconsin and 15 years at Breitung Township Public Schools in Kingsford, Michigan.

Ms. Hogan is also active in church music (singer, accompanist, guitarist, pianist, organist, praise music, etc.), community musical groups, as a director of touring student musical groups in the U.S. and abroad, and as a participating educator in camps, workshops, and regional universities and junior colleges. She has performed and recorded as a soloist and with the versatile folk and hybrid group WindSong, and she continues to perform and record as a soloist.

Presently Ms. Hogan is also the musical director and principal conductor of the Dickinson County Community Chorus, a popular, versatile, and distinguished two-state, multi-county musical group based in Kingsford, Michigan. In 2013, DCCC awarded her this spot after she had served for several years as associate conductor, and Ms. Hogan is the organization’s fourth director in its 47-year existence.

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