Kelly, 43, is among the more than 60 area women attending the weekend's festivities, which include competitions and workshops. She hopes to bring back some fresh ideas for her choral group.
"We want to raise our level. We want to sing straighter and cleaner and put more energy and emotion into it," she says with obvious enthusiasm. "That's always our goal."
What attracts women like Kelli Kelly to Sweet Adelines is the desire to sing and perform.
Kelly has sung in school choirs and other settings and was considering auditioning for the Chesaning Showboat when she quit her job at a local credit union to raise her son, Sam.
"I thought, boy, I need something outside of home as an activity," she says, recalling a conversation with a former client whose wife had found solace singing with the Sweet Adelines.
Kelly went to the weekly practice and was hooked.
"They were getting ready for a competition, and they had some really good songs and put all this emotion into it and had choreography for it," she recalls.
"It was just so cool, barbershop singing with no accompaniment. I don't think I had ever heard that before."
Up to then, Kelly was content singing along to pop music on the radio. Sweet Adelines opened up a whole new world, which involved music, choreography and theater.
And there was something about what these women, all of whom did this in their spare time, brought to the music that really got to her.
"It was the emotion behind it, I guess," she says. "I was in my early 30s when I saw these women. I had only known high school choirs and stuff like that. We didn't have show choirs like this. They put so much heart into it and the feeling you got from what the words portrayed."
That was 10 years ago. She's been a member ever since, spending four of her past five years with the Fenton Lakes group - the Flint area's other Sweet Adelines chorus - as its assistant director.
She heard about the Song of the Lakes opening last year. For her audition, Kelly had to run the group, whose members range in age from 12 to 84, through a song of their choosing.
Joining the Adelines also inspired the 1981 Powers Catholic High School grad to resume the college career she gave up when she dropped out of Mott Community College a few years earlier.
"I had ended up in different positions musically, and I didn't have the education for it," she says. "I thought, well, I'll go back to school and get it."
Now she's preparing the group, which practices at the Davison Senior Center, for its annual concert Nov. 5 at Davison High School.
Called "Sung Jury," Kelly describes it as a "courtroom comedy" about a woman who sues a guy for stranding her at the altar.
All the lawyers and jury members are women, and the judge, who's a man, falls in love with the cad's girlfriend.
"I took the idea from an operetta I've seen," says the Flushing resident, who wrote "Sung Jury" with fellow member Kris Williams.
"I've applied our songs to it; it represents all of our repertoire."
The choreography includes a "briefcase brigade" of female attorneys.
"It's going to be a lot of fun," she says, adding that coaches from other choruses around the country are coming in to help.
Now she's got other members singing her praises. "Her enthusiasm, high energy and love of music is contagious," says Carole Essenmacher, the group's publicity chairwoman, "and she inspires the chorus members of all ages to do their best."
The Song of the Lakes Chorus of Sweet Adelines presents "Sung Jury," with 4 Shore, the Four Man Fishin' Tackle Choir and Katie O'Brien, at 4 p.m. Nov. 5 at Davison High School. For details on the concert or chorus, call (810) 742-0977 or go to www.songofthelakessweetadeline.com.
Reprinted with persmission by the Flint Journal: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/features-4/1128766856256330.xml&coll=5&thispage=1
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