The Board has instituted the following COVID restrictions for all rehearsals.
REQUIREMENTS
Fully vaccinated with booster, if eligible Singers will sit in pews with social distancing Masks are recommended but not required
STAY AT HOME
If you have had a positive COVID test If you know you have been exposed to someone who has COVID (e.g., a family member) If you think you have been exposed to someone who has COVID If you have taken a COVID test and have not yet received your results
RETURN TO REHEARSAL
Only after staying at home for 10 days, AND receiving a negative COVID test.
Please abide by these restrictions to protect yourself and our fellow chorus members from the virus.
And if you are sick with a non-COVID illness, please stay at home to reduce the spread.
We will resume rehearsals for our Spring season on Tuesday, January 25 at Hillview Baptist Church. Our new start time is 6:30 pm (15 minutes earlier). Please note the precautions we will use to try to keep everyone as safe as possible from the Covid virus.
The Aiken Singers will begin a new season of rehearsals on September 7th, at 6:45 PM, at the Hillview Baptist Church, located on the Aiken-Augusta highway across from Bobby’s BBQ.
To ensure a safe singing environment, returning members and those interested in becoming new members must be fully vaccinated to participate.
The Aiken Singers have selected a new Music and Artistic Director to lead their musical organization. The selection of Mr. Josh Edwards was chosen from a group of local choral leaders with experience in conducting adult choral groups to replace their founding artistic director, Diane Haslam.
Josh has a Bachelor of Music degree from Carson-Newman College in Tennessee and a master’s degree from Anderson University. He presently serves as Worship and Administrative Pastor at Hillview Baptist Church in Graniteville. While he has had extensive choral directing experience at several churches, he has also applied his piano accompanying skills at the Fort Gordon Dinner Theater for the Augusta Players and other local musical productions. “It is an honor and a privilege to be the next Artistic Director of the Aiken Singers. My desire is to build upon the solid foundation of singing already put in place. I’m looking forward to many wonderful seasons ahead.“
Our founder, leader, director, and inspiration is leaving us. Diane is returning to her roots, in England, to be with her mum and begin a new phase in her life. We wish her well and best wishes for her new journey.
We put together a virtual farewell card. You may watch the video here.
Aiken Singers Announces the Winners of the 2019 Diane Haslam Vocal Music
Scholarships
The Aiken
Singers is pleased to announce the winners of its 2019 vocal music
scholarships. The winner of the $1500 Diane Haslam Vocal Performance
Scholarship is Caroline Visbisky.
Miss
Visbisky studied voice with Diane Haslam for the past four years and sang with
Belles Cantos for several semesters. She was the winner of the Aiken Singer’s
music camp scholarship in 2018 and used that scholarship to attend the Musical
Theater Camp at Charleston Southern University. For the past three years, she
has been a member of Midland Valley High School’s mixed Honors Choir and the Women’s
Honor Choir. She also attended American Choral Directors Association Honors
Choir weekend for the past two years performing at Southern Wesleyan University
in 2017 and College of Charleston in 2018. Caroline will use her scholarship to
study vocal performance at Anderson University.
Kyah Bodiford
was the winner of the 2018 Diane Haslam Vocal Performance Scholarship and has
had her scholarship renewed for 2019 in the amount of $1000. Last year Kyah used
her 2018 scholarship to study voice at USCA under professor Florence Hechtel. In
addition to her studies at USCA, Kyah has performed as a featured soloist at St
Mary’s Church in Aiken, and has participated in other performance occasions in
Augusta, and Columbia. In 2016 Kyah was the winner of the Aiken Singer’s summer
camp scholarship which she used to attend a Furman University vocal summer
camp.
Aiken Singers established the Diane Haslam Vocal Music Scholarship
in 2010 as a vocal performance scholarship for graduating senior high school
students studying in local high schools. In 2016 an additional scholarship,
known as the Summer Music Camp Scholarship was added to the program to
encourage local junior high school students to explore vocal music as a
possible career choice. Since 2010 the Aiken Singers has awarded seven vocal
performance scholarships and two summer music camp awards.
Caroline Visbisky [center] winner of the 2019 Diane Haslam Vocal
Performance award pictured with Aiken Singer’s music director Diane Haslam [right]
and Jim Pierce Chairman of Aiken Singer’s scholarship committee
Kyah Bodiford
performs at the Aiken Singer’s Friends & Family concert May 28th,
2019 where she was presented with the renewal of her 2018 Diane
Haslam Vocal Performance Scholarship award for 2019.