Fourteen girls from the Tucson Girls Chorus' Advanced Choir, smartly dressed in black gowns, stood arrow-tall in two rows semicircling Marcela Molina.
She raised her hands and the girls started to sing, a bit shaky at first with a stray soprano scaling too high, an alto falling flat. Molina lowered her hands and the girls stopped singing. She pointed to one in the back - not so loud, she offered - and another off to the side - bigger voice, she instructed.
Once again, she said, and raised her hands. The girls started singing and the soprano voices came in crystal clear, the altos more nuanced and the mezzos filling in for a warm harmonic blend.
It was two songs to showtime last Thursday night in the modest dance studio at the Sun City Vistoso community center in Oro Valley. In the main ballroom just up the hall, about 60 residents of the retirement community were sipping coffee and nibbling desserts, awaiting the Girls Chorus performance as part of the December dinner meeting of the Sun City Singles.
For Molina, the chorus's artistic director, and her girls, the 30-minute performance was a dress rehearsal for Saturday's annual winter concert - one of two big concerts the chorus performs each year.
"Sounds of Winter will feature the full force of the chorus - the Ladybugs beginners, the next level Hummingbirds, the Mariposa Singers comprising sixth- and seventh-graders, the more advanced Jubilate and the Advanced Choir made up of high-schoolers.
There are 110 girls who have been rehearsing for Saturday's concert since August.
"They sound great," Molina said a few days before last week's performance. "It's a vast difference from when we started the year, when some of the younger singers have no notion of singing technique or breathing. It really shows ... in terms of sound."
"Sounds of Winter" will survey all colors of the season, from contemporary Christmas songs ("Christmastime, That Special Time of Year," "The Reindeer Rap," "The Twelve Groovy Days of Christmas") to the Jewish folk song "O Hanukkah."
Molina will lead the joint choirs in "Trepak," from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" to open the concert. The rest of the show will spotlight the various choirs, under the direction of conductors Molina, Jennifer Schwartz and Chris Fresolone.
Throughout the fall, the choirs have performed at community events such as last week's dinner. With each performance they grow stronger in voice and stage presence.
Last Thursday, the Advanced Choir showed off a muscular voice and commanding stage presence in a performance whose only hiccup was an unexpected cough from a chorister at the concert's end.
Molina coaxed colorful harmonies and a warm gentleness from the singers on folk songs like "Shenandoah" and "O It's Good Bye Liza Jane"; and sacred seasonal tunes including "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," which, at Molina's urging, turned into an audience singalong.
If you go
The Tucson Girls Chorus: "Sounds of Winter"
• When: 7 p.m. Saturday.
• Where: Catalina Foothills High School auditorium, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
• Tickets: $15, kids 2 and under are free. Available at the door or through the Girls Chorus, 577-6064.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.
