Happy Holidays from Fifth House Ensemble!!

Happy Holidays from Fifth House Ensemble from Fifth House Ensemble on Vimeo.

(Wo)Men in Tights Donor List

Thank you to all who donated to our latest FUNdraiser - (Wo)Men in Tights! Here's a list of all who were involved - we're so proud to have you as part of the Fifth House family!

Anonymous
Edward Abrams
Laura Alessio
Kathryn Alexander
Stephen and Megan Balderston
Aaron Bates
Joan Beseman
Bozarth's Garage
Richard and Sheron Bozarth
Mark and Theresa Bozarth
Colleen Bozarth
John Buranosky
Clark Carruth
Chi-Yuan Chu
Jeffrey Clarke
Tom and Kerri Coffey
Allan Curtis
Robert Dillon
Lara Dorjath
Kate Hamada
Jennifer Higdon
Jennifer Woodrum Hogg
Glenn and Linda Huse
Matthew Krinsky
David and Susan Lewis
Sunny Luciani
Dave Mancini
Craig Marks
Karen Mensch and the Chicago Community Trust
James Monohan
Catherine Nesbit
Yimin and Carmen Ngan and the Freddie Mac Foundation
Lesley Palmer
Nathan Parker
Gabriel Pitta
Rebekah Scallet
Rachel Schwartz
Michael Sellery
Marilynn Simms
Rita Simo
Adam and Colleen Snoza
Donald and Lynn Snoza
Helen Sommavilla
Caen Thomason-Redus
Myrna Ulanday
Adam Watson
Eugenia Wie
Gordon Withers
Nicholas and Susan Yasillo
Earl Zaromb
Caren Zeitler
Michelle Zeitler

And the tights were worn...

We are SO pleased to announce that today's (Wo)Men in Tights fundraiser exceeded its $2000 goal - THANK YOU to everyone who donated to our effort! For those of you who voted for Buddy the Elf, these pictures are for you. By popular demand, the Soldierette costume was replaced by Buddy's girlfriend, Jovi. Here are some images of our performance at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where we were greeted with giggles, applause, and merry little voices singing along!

We'll be posting a donor list to this blog shortly - keep your eyes peeled for your name in lights!

(Wo)Men in Tights

Have you been waiting for an opportunity to see Adam and Melissa wear tights in public for a great cause? Here's your chance!



Following in the footsteps of Jenny's wildly successful "This is How Jenny Rolls", we (Melissa and Adam) are excited to announce another wildly hilarious fundraising event.

Here's how it works. You give $5 (or more if you'd like) to our fund,and we play fun holiday music for kids, families, and guests at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital. We have two locations planned-the main lobby and the Brown Family Life Center-so that we can brighten as many days as possible for both ambulatory and inpatient care. We'll be raising money for Fifth House, and giving back to the community at the same time.

And, just to spice things up, we're going to look ridiculous.That's right, we're going to be wearing costumes. Use your donation to vote for which costume set we wear: Mr. and Mrs. Peppermint, Buddy the Elf and the Soldierette or Santa's Elves. The costumes that earn the most donations will be worn at our marathon event.

Here's the deal: the more you pay, the more we play. Our goal is to get 400 people to donate $5 each, for a total of $2,000. If we reach our goal, we'll play for a total of three hours, an exhausting day, but for a great cause.

Your donation helps to fund our subscription series, our educational endeavors, and many other important projects that are changing the face of classical music. Remember that Fifth House Ensemble is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. All donations are fully tax-deductible, and you will receive a note of thanks for tax purposes, as well as recognition in our programs.

Details:
Wednesday, December 3rd
11:45AM - Lunch at location TBD. Come and laugh at us in public while we wear our costumes.
1:00PM - 3:00PM - Performance time in the Children's Memorial Lobby
3:00PM - 4:00PM - Performance time in the Brown Family Life Center

VOTE SOON, and VOTE BIG!

Visit
http://fifth-house.com/newsletters/fundraiser.html
to make an online donation, or send a check with your vote to:

Fifth House Ensemble
Melissa Snoza, Executive Director
4361 Bunker Hill Drive
Algonquin IL 60102

Kenosha, doncha know

After our exciting season opener last weekend, there was no chance we would take any time off. This weekend Fifth House takes Wisconsin by storm! Yesterday, five of us visited Tremper HS and performed for two band classes, discussed chamber music rehearsal techniques, and the privilege of working with living composers. We sure do love our school visits, and Tremper was no exception.

On this sunny day, we are doing a day-long residency at Carthage College. This morning we coached two chamber groups, playing Vaughn Williams' Household Music and Stravinsky's Octet. Look carefully, and you'll see the student ensemble's newest members, Melissa and Herine, subbing in for missing musicians on wildly innappropriate instrumentations. To quote Herine, "This is just like the nightmare I had last night." What Herine, you don't like playing bassoon lines?

As I type, our ensemble is recording works from tonight's concert for Mark Petering, our esteemed composer du jour. At 7:30, we have a concert of 5 pieces by Mark, all premieres (except for Kakadu, which was premiered on our series last weekend). Tomorrow at 3, we have another concert at First United Methodist Church in Kenosha playing another premiere by Mark, as well as Loeffler's Rhapsodies and Poulenc's Sextet for winds and piano. If you didn't know we loved you, Kenosha, you know it now.

For all of our Wisconsin fans, stay tuned. We have a residency at UW Milwaukee on February 21st, and our string quartet will perform at the Racine Art Museum on May 1st.

Till then, Wisconsin...Till then.

Thanks to all of the wonderful faculty at students at Carthage who made this weekend possible!

-AM

Act I Performance Partner - Lillstreet Art Center

As most of you know, one of the most popular parts of our subscription series is our collaborations. Last year's performance partners included Joel Hall Dance, Gingarte Capoeira, Merit School of Music Musicians, and CircEsteem.

Lest you think we aren't constantly expanding our horizons, I'm proud to share the results of our latest partnership! I had the pleasure of visiting the Intuitive Painting Class at Lillstreet Art Center, a fantastic place for people of all ages and experiences to explore their creativity.

Our lucky guinea pigs got sneak previews of the repertoire for Act I, painting works inspired by our music. I was completely amazed by how much was created in just a few hours, and can't wait to share their pieces with you at our concert. Some works will be used in projection during the performance, but we'll have a gallery of works for you to experience before and after the show as well as at intermission.

So a huge thanks to Melanie Brown, Amy Mayfield, and the brilliant artists of Lillstreet!

-AM

Commedia dell'Arte Launches on Saturday!

Our second annual subscription series titled, "Commedia dell'Arte: A Concert Series in Four Acts," launches on Saturday, October 11 at 7pm with Act 1!

For this year's series, we've created a storyline loosely based on Commedia plots/characters, and we'll be using silent film-inspired slides to help tell the tale as we score it with music.

Join us for Act 1, as we introduce our cast (two lovers, their family members, happy townspeople, an evil cast of strings). We'll be featuring music of Janacek, Loeffler, Hindemith, Petering and Nielsen.

For those of you who heard about our HILARIOUS photo shoot and said you'd pay money to see the results, here's your chance. Tickets are available online and at the door for $15 general, $8 students/seniors.

We look forward to seeing you there!

"This is How Jenny Rolls" Fundraiser

Jenny Woodrum, Fifth House clarinetist and "roller-skating ninja" took it upon herself to start a fundraiser for our group. Her grand efforts and amazing costume brought in over $1700!! A big thank-you to all who supported the cause - an updated donor list is now posted on our site. Congratulations Jenny!!!

Commedia Photo Shoot!

We recently had a photo shoot to prepare our silent film-inspired slides to go with this season's Commeda dell'Arte subscription series concerts. We had way too much fun hamming it up for the camera! Here are some shots of Adam, Melissa and Herine's characters poking fun at the young lovers' romance, and of Clark, Herine and Drew (the evil strings). Many thanks to Eric for his time and talent in taking these photos!

An Evening of Thanks

Fifth House hosted its annual donor reception last night! We enjoyed a Brazilian-style churrasco feast hosted at Matt and Herine's swanky new home.

Our heartfelt thanks go to the generous donors who made the 2007-2008 season possible - we could never do this without you, and are so proud of what we have been able to achieve together this year. For those of you who were unable to make it, here are some pictures, courtesy of SnoStudios as always. Big thanks to Joanna for introducing us to the most generous floral designer ever!!

Drumroll Please...

After much resizing, cropping, editing of sound clips and borderline criminal harassment of various companies' tech support staff (Wade and Val, you're my heroes), the new Fifth House site is up at www.fifth-house.com!!

Many thanks to SnoStudios for the stunning photography and to Matty Koschak for the fantastic recordings he's been producing for us all year.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the FH Blog!

Hi all!

With the launch of our new website, we thought we'd ambitiously leap into the world of blogging. Here's hoping that we have the mental space to update this regularly with news, upcoming performances and behind-the-scenes gossip.

But for now, bedtime!