Gettin' Figgy wit' it

Friday evening was the Great Figgy Pudding Street Corner Caroling Competition, an annual event to raise money for the Pike Market Senior Center. Over 40 choirs participate, performing and raising money to support the Center. I normally sing with the OK Chorale, but this year I decided to sing with the Starbucks Coffee Choir. This turned out to be a good thing, because the OK Chorale ended up not competing.

We had a lot of fun singing traditional carols as well as goofy coffee-focused songs (such as "I'm Dreaming of a Tall Latte"). We gave out free coffee to anyone who sang along with us to "Jingle Bells". I'm also in a smaller auditioned performance choir through Starbucks called "Special Blend", and we sang a few of our pieces too. Per Margaret and Chris (who froze their tushes off being loyal spectators all evening long), we sounded pretty good.

The competitive categories are as follows:

Figlanthropy: Awarded to the 3 teams who get the most donations before the event.
Most Original Performance: Awarded to the most original team. Creativity counts!
Best Choral Performance: Awarded to the team with the sweetest vocals.
People’s Choice Award: Spectators turn in their ballots for their favorite team.

This year, we won two of the awards! We won the Figlanthropy award in a big way. (3rd and 2nd place raised ~$4000 and ~$4700, respectively. We raised ~$27,000!) We were aiming to win Figlanthropy, so we were very happy about that (we've won Figlanthropy for the last five years in a row, beating our own record each year).

But the really exciting surprise was that we won Best Choral Performance!! Now, there are some stellar choirs who participate in this competition. Plus, we've never won any award other than Figlanthropy. I'm so proud of us! Whoo hoo!

Special Blend is performing our first official concert on December 13. I'm looking forward to it!