Tomorrow marks the two-week anniversary of the first time I walked out on to the stage of Carnegie Hall, one of the most beautiful and important concert halls in the entire world. Before that, I had actually only been inside the building on one previous occasion, several years earlier, when Kathy and I (along with our friend Trevor Parker) enjoyed a beautiful choral concert from box seats just off of the stage. It was tremendously exciting to see the place in person after having seeing it time and again on televised concerts, and having also heard its radiant acoustics in many famous recordings made there. Clearly it’s the kind of setting which inspires musicians to give the best they have to give, and it’s safe to say that some of the finest musical performances ever given have happened at Carnegie Hall.
Sitting in the audience there is one thing, but walking out on that stage is ten times better, and especially when you are walking out on that stage not as a tourist but as a musician about to perform there. That was a thrill experienced by each and every member of the Carthage Choir, their marvelous conductor Eduardo Garcia- Novelli, and their beloved guest conductor Weston Noble. It was a stage on which Mr. Noble had conducted quite a number of times over the years, so he walked out with a very cool sort of assurance. But for the rest of us it almost felt like that amazing final scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in which that magnificent alien spacecraft finally comes into full view and the earthlings on the ground can only stare in dumbstruck wonderment. Walking out on that stage and staring out into that gorgeous auditorium felt similarly thrilling. But what was even more thrilling was when the choir first began to sing. To hear their rich and beautiful sound roll out into that warm, inviting acoustic was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments when you realize that you are experiencing something you never dreamt was possible. And however thrilling that moment was, multiply it ten times over to get a glimmer of what it felt like the following evening when we actually performed on that stage which has seen the likes of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Toscanini, Heifetz, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, and many many more.
The Carthage Choir actually performed on two concerts at Carnegie Hall that weekend. The first was a concert featuring two different mass choirs (each numbering over two hundred singers) in performances of Haydn’s St. Nicholai Mass and Orff’s Carmina Burana. (The Carthage Choir was part of the former.) That was exciting in and of itself, and it gave the choir its first glimpse of the auditorium and probably helped them to feel more at home there when it came time for our solo performance that evening. On that second concert, three different choirs sang thirty minutes on their own – having earned the right to do so through audition- with the Carthage Choir chosen to be the finale of that concert. And while the first two groups (one from Texas and the other from the Twin Cities) were exemplary church/ community choruses, it was clear that when the Carthage Choir walked out on to that stage, the level of music-making was going to explode through the roof. And indeed it did. The choir sang gloriously- and what I especially loved about their performance was that it was just the right combination of focused/careful/accurate singing and let-her-rip/let’s-have-some-fun singing. Every t was crossed and every i was dotted- but it went so far beyond that. It was the musical equivalent of setting off fireworks, in song after song after song- and the audience responded in kind. And it was so gratifying to see the choir receive two standing ovations- one after “In Remembrance” by Jeffrey Ames, which is the piece that Mr. Noble conducted- and then at the end of the concert. And while it’s true that there were some friends in the audience whose enthusiasm was understandable and even required to some extent, many in the audience were either members of the first two choirs or there for them rather than us. . . so it was immensely gratifying to hear such fervent, prolonged applause from every corner of the audience.
I could go on and on about the particular pieces the choir sang – or about the gorgeous Steinway grand piano I was privileged to play (probably the best piano I’ve ever played in my whole life) – or the strange ordeal the choir experienced earlier in the day when they were herded into a very small room and then left there for a long long long time until Eduardo came to rescue them (the students nicknamed that room Choir Jail) – or about the stirring pre-concert pep talk given to the choir by President Campbell (who was there along with his wife Barbara and some of the school’s trustees) – or the glorious meal I enjoyed before the concert, thanks to the generosity of the parents of my voice student Andrew Spinelli (I blogged about his senior voice recital on May 22nd) – or the lovely, simple meal Kathy and I enjoyed afterwards with Mr. Noble, who was just too spent to join the choir on their midnight cruise (as were we) . . .
but instead I’ll talk about the HUGE shock I received when I opened up the closet of our hotel room Sunday afternoon, took out my tuxedo, and discovered to my horror that there was no shirt with it – only the jacket and slacks. I can still feel the waves of nausea that racked my body when I fully realized my predicament, and with Kathy off with our friends Rita and Ben, attending a performance of the musical “Memphis,” I was on my own to find a solution. I decided to wear a black mock turtleneck with the tux, but with the hope that somewhere in the neighborhood of Carnegie Hall I would be able to find some kind of white dress shirt that would look halfway decent. Well, the only men’s clothing stores in the immediate vicinity of Carnegie Hall looked like the kind of places that Andrew Carnegie himself might have frequented – each bearing the name of some Italian designer – and the cheapest dress shirt I found was $145. . . and that particular store didn’t have my size. Someplace else I found a white shirt in my size – for $165 – but with colored buttons that screamed “this is not a real tux shirt!!!” The only nice long-sleeved white dress shirt I found in my size bore the jaw-dropping price tag of $275, which I was not willing to spend – not even for Carnegie Hall with President Campbell in the audience. (Only much later did someone in the choir mention that there was a T.J. Maxx about three blocks from Carnegie Hall, which very likely would have been the answer to my problem- but not on any of the blocks I frantically searched.) So I took the stage of Carnegie Hall dressed head-to-toe in black, feeling mighty stupid, and determined to play especially well to make up for my carelessness. Which I hope I did.
A final word: The Carthage Choir worked incredibly hard all year long – and never harder than in the closing weeks of the spring semester, which in a normal year might be a time for a bit of coasting, since all that might remain on the calendar would be whatever they might sing for the Baccalaureate service or the commencement exercises (which might include music they already knew.) But not this year. Maestro Garcia-Novelli worked them relentlessly, with a long rehearsal added the last day of finals – and then long rehearsals the two days after commencement, and while I never heard a single word of complaint, I’m sure that for some of them it was way too much of a good thing and maybe the hardest they have ever worked as singers.
But then they walked out on to the stage of Carnegie Hall and from the first moments of their performance, all I could think of was “they deserve to be here. They belong on this stage.” Had they not worked as hard as they had and attained such polished perfection, they would have been forgiven for thinking to themselves “what are we doing here?” “Did someone make a mistake?” “Is this really supposed to be us on this stage, singing this concert?” But instead, they could sing with absolute conviction and confidence, knowing that they were fully deserving of singing in that glorious hall. And more than anything else, I hope the students never ever forget how gratifying and exciting it was to sing at Carnegie Hall and to know that they deserved to be there. Because when it comes right down to it, what’s even better than singing at Carnegie Hall is knowing that you’re good enough to sing there. That’s the greatest thrill of all, in my book.
pictured at the top: The choir taking its final bow. Kathy took this photo from the audience. She took other shots that zoom in to show the choir in closeup, but you see much less of Carnegie Hall itself – so that’s why I chose this particular photo. And I wish you could have seen the beaming smile on Maestro Garcia-Novelli’s face. I know he was incredibly proud of the students- but he deserves so much of the credit for what they achieved.
pictured below: Maestri Eduardo Garcia-Novelli and Weston Noble, before the concert, with the choir.
