It was a sunny and brisk this past Saturday, as I was approaching the Park Avenue Armory Women's Mental Health Shelter for POHC's latest concert. I'm used traveling to the shelter now, since I've performed there before with POHC. I saw some fellow POHC members entering the building. After a short elevator ride we made it to the third floor where we set out coats and bags in the pantry. From there, I could overhear René leading the Choir in voice warm ups in the cafeteria across the hall, where we were also to perform our concert.

Some of the shelter residents arrived in the cafeteria while rested our voices after the warm-ups. Soon, we were ready to perform. We started with Siyahamba, which we sang very well. The audience really liked it.

Then we sang Peace Salaam Shalom. We tried to get the audience to participate they didn't know the words; I think they liked the song anyways. Our third song was Od Yavo. We did get the audience to clap along with this song. Then came Down By The Riverside and several choir members went down to the audience shaking hands when a catchy lyrics "I'm gonna shake hands around the world..." started. Next was Little Bitty Pretty One with yours truly singing solo along with my fellow Tenor, Alex.

Then we did This Land was your Land. We usually have the audience singing with us, but the lyrics were not passed around, so the audience didn't sing it as much. They seemed to enjoy it regardless. We moved on to Imagine, then Hafinjan with Soprano Cheryl doing the solo. She has one great voice there. Toward the end we sang our Channukah song, Light One Candle, then a 9/11 commemorative song, Give Us Hope. We closed with our theme song, Let There Be Peace of Earth, with Soprano Deb and myself singing the solos. The audience loved us, and they thanked us for the performance we did for them, which was wonderful.

-Peace of Heart Tenor

It has become a tradition for a member of POHC to do a post-concert write-up. It started when our Sign-up Coordinator began emailing her summaries to the other members in order to entice newer members to sign-up to sing at community concerts held early in the season. It didn't take long for Concert Write-ups to become greatly anticipated amongst our members, so we share them here in hopes that you'll join us at a future concert.