President's 2006 Annual Report

Dear Friends,

Once again we are coming together to share our love and commitment to our music ministry and most especially to further nurture the church musician’s role in our Holy Churches.

The Executive Board met in September at Holy Trinity Church, Orlando to plan our 30th Annual Conference with Chairman Tom Haynes and his committee. Our sincere gratitude and deep appreciation for the many hours they devoted in making this conference so special for all of us.

The Epiphany Centennial at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida brought to our shores His All Holiness, Patriarch Bartholomew I. JoAnna Hill and Joanne Kambouris gave their time and talents for many months of rehearsing the choirs from the Tampa Bay area for this historic visit. As a result of this event, the Pan Orthodox Youth Choir of the Tampa Bay area is a result of the vision of Joanne.

In February I attended the Choral Competition/Hellenic Dance Festival/Byzantine Music Weekend in Greenville, SC. There were five mixed choirs of adult and youth that participated in singing folk and sacred songs. During this weekend Metropolitan ALEXIOS stated his wish to me personally and to those assembled to accompany a Federation choir to Greece. This subject was first broached by His Eminence at the 2003 Conference and on other occasions during his visits to church choirs.

Your Federation Board has made the revisions to the Charter and Bylaws. The process began at our fall meeting in Orlando and concluded in February at our winter meeting. All Metropolis of Atlanta church musicians will be receiving a hard copy when we complete the procedural guidelines this coming year.

It gives me the greatest pleasure to announce that we now have seven District Supervisors for our seven conferences or regions. This will facilitate the job of the membership chairman who had the sole responsibility of gathering the information of all church musicians. We have a Database Manager on board which will make this awesome task of keeping our membership informed much easier.

Our webmaster, Charles Joiner @ cjoiner@mac.com, has reported that in the last six months we have had over 2500 visits; the last week having 139 unique visitors with a total of 240 visits. This shows that it is being used by quite a number of people. Once again we welcome any ideas on how to further enhance with information and additional links. Were you a unique visitor?

I attended the National Forum President’s Meeting in April, The Translations Project is ongoing with completion of several Oloi Mazi Hymns. The “Top Eleven” are the hymns frequently sung by entire congregations. It is the objective of the NF to have a translation to enable everyone to sing together a hymn like Christ Is Risen in both Greek and English. Several programs for the beginner chanter are now available and are supported by the NF. Additional projects are also in progress and will be available soon for those interested in learning the Byzantine chant. There are several chanter schools throughout the Archdiocese including the Metropolis of Atlanta.

With the vision of Metropolitan ALEXIOS, we have established a chanter liaison in association with the Federation. It is a start albeit a small one. We commend Dr. Michael Rallis for accepting this challenge. His Eminence is hopeful that we can cultivate unity and with his invaluable input to clergy, chanter, choirmaster and all church musicians, the music of the East of our ancestors in Greece and the music of the West of our Churches in America can prosper and continue to coexist. To quote Henry Ford, “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.”

My heartfelt gratitude extends to His Eminence, Archbishop ALEXIOS for his prayers, spiritual guidance and continual support of our federation. It has been an honor and privilege to have served as your president. The SFGOCM is one of the finest choir federations in America because of your dedication to our music ministry in our Holy Churches. We will traverse the roads set before us and strive to continue on a path with a renewed spirit of compassion, commitment, faith and trust. “Let all that you do be done with love.” 1 Corinthians 16:14

Mary Zervos
Choir Member and President