On November 1 Conductor Margaret Thomas, Manager Betty Jacobs, and Board President Diane Blankenhorn joined the excitement going on in Seattle, where the release of a new audio was being celebrated with two performances of a work that was commissioned by Mississippi Boychoir in 1999.  A four-year, $80,000 project from conception to performance, Eudora’s Fable: The Shoe Bird was based on a book for children written by one of Mississippi’s Pulitzer Prize authors, Eudora Welty, and was set to music by native Mississippian, Samuel Jones, the current composer in residence at the Seatlle Symphony. 

The brilliance of Jim Dale as narrator is added to the strengths of Welty and Jones in the new release.  Dale was reader of all the Harry Potter books and was in Seattle to perform the work on November 1 with the Seattle Symphony and the Northwest Boychoir and girls of Vocalpoint, Seattle.

Upon arrival in Seattle the ladies from Mississippi were entertained by Jones, Joseph Crnko, director of the singers, and staff members of the Seattle Symphony.  The following day they observed the rehearsal for the concert, and on November 1 they attended both performances, where Dr. Jones was besieged to autograph concert programs and CD’s.  Even Margaret Thomas got in on the act of autographing!

The labor of accomplishing The Shoe Bird Project paid off in an amazing way on Thursday, December 4, when it was announced that the new release was one of five nominees for a Grammy Award in the Category of Best Musical for Children.  (--Although it’s just as much fun for adults as it is for children!)  Mississippi Boychoir will have a vested interest in 2009 Grammy Award presentations come February!

On December 4, 2008 nominations for the 51st Grammy Awards were announced, and in the category of Best Musical for Children was the Seattle recording of The Shoe Bird, performed by the Seattle Symphony, the Northwest Boychoir and Vocalpoint Seattle, and narrator Jim Dale.  --Ten years after Mississippi Boychoir's conception of the plan to commission Samuel Jones (formally of Jackson and Indianola, MS) to compose the Eudora Welty-based work.