Wow! What a long trip. We left Sacramento at about 12:30 p.m. Christmas day, made a stop in Orange County and Denver, and then finally got to Newark, New Jersey at 11:30 p.m. Thankfully, we made it all the way without loosing any of our luggage! We got to our hotel room at about 1 a.m. and then to bed at about 2. It was a long day, so we all slept very well and got to sleep in a little bit, which was very nice!
Monday morning, we got up, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant downstairs, and then had to be at the hotel where all the chorus members were meeting to go into the city together. We all got together and boarded two different busses and headed for New York City. Our first stop was the "Church of All Nations." This is where we checked in, got our name tags and t-shirts, did our auditions to make sure we know all the music, and ate lunch. Once everyone had finished everything, the chorus manager, show producer, and chorus director gave some announcements and logistics about how the day was going to go. We had a lot to do, but I was so excited to get started, especially because the auditions were over. After the announcements, the chorus director, Joe Cerutti, asked, "so, do you guys want to hear what this group sounds like?" and of course, everyone cheered with an overwhelming "yes." He had us all stand and sing "Come On, Get Happy" for the first time as a group of 160. It was absolutely amazing!! I could not believe how synchronized we were. It was like we had been together since we got our music. And being in a big church with great acoustics made it even better.
We walked from the church over to Carnegie Hall because it was only a couple of blocks. Once we got there, we had a lot of practicing to do. We practiced from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Then we had an hour to eat dinner, change into our concert attire (black slacks, black shoes and socks, black dress shirt, and a green or red tie), and get lined up to go on stage to do our dress rehearsal. We all went down six flights of stairs and waited to be let on stage. When we entered the main hall, it was literally breath taking. I had looked at many pictures of Carnegie Hall before this occasion, but walking out onto that stage was amazing. That hall is so beautiful. Words really cannot describe how incredible it is. We went through the intro's and transitions of songs and did sound and lighting checks. When our 45 minutes was up for our on stage rehearsal, we went back up to our practicing room where we had to wait for about 15 minutes before we went on stage and did our actual performance.
We made the decent down the stairs from our backstage room on the sixth floor, to the main stage and waited. It was kind of fun because there were so many of us that in the stairwell, our line of people went from the first floor to the fifth floor, stringing all around the stairs. We did the wave and some other fun games to keep us occupied because we were not allowed to talk at all. Before we went on, Joe Cerutti, our director, went around to all of us, while we were lined up on the stairs, and shook our hands. Once he got back down to the front, we all went on stage and the audience gave us a warm welcome, applauding while we all got on stage and into our positions. The energy in the hall was amazing.
We started our performance out with "Come On, Get Happy" (Theme from The Partridge Family). This is the song where choreography was added. The song was full of energy and before we had even gotten to our big finish of the song, the audience was already giving us a standing ovation! It was a great song to start out with and a great intro to the rest of our performance.
Our next song was the holiday classic, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." This song was very simple, but it had lots of energy and some of the audience sang along with us.
After we finished our Christmas song, the Good Times Quartet stepped out from the chorus and sang "Blue Skies." The audience loved the quartet approach to the music and again, gave them a standing ovation before they finish their song.
Once the quartet was done with their song, the chorus sang two more songs. Our first was the great Beach Boys classic, "God Only Knows." Everyone loved this song because it was the Beach Boys! The next song that we sang was "Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables with Time Waurick as the soloist. This song is very moving and beautiful.
After that, the 2011 collegiate quartet champions, Prestige, came out from the chorus and sang "Paper Moon" and "Swanee".
It was now time for our finale. We sang "Tribute to World Peace" which was a medley of "Let There Be Peace On Earth," "One Voice," and "One Song" with Rick Gordon and Tim Waurick as soloists. This was my favorite song that we did. It is a long song, but it is so beautiful and powerful to sing. We had a HUGE finish to the song that was incredible. It made me emotional and again, the audience gave a standing ovation. We then exited the stage and went back up to our room where we had to fill out a survey and then we were pretty much free. I went back into the hall to the balcony to listen to the Orchestra. They did 10 songs and they were amazing. They had all their music memorized and I could have listened to them all night. The audience gave them a 10 min.standing ovation and the entire orchestra was crying. It was very emotional to see the audience give them such a long standing O and then have them stand their crying. It was quite the experience.
After the show was over, I met up with my family (and friends, the Carsons, that moved to Conneticut from Vacaville 4 years ago). Was so cool to have them come to see us and the show. We were not tired at all. We went down the Times Square and walked around and got dessert and then went back to our apartment.
Monday was a great day. I wish we could have done another performance because it was so amazing! Thank You so much for supporting me so that I could come and have this awesome opportunity with my family.
*Ok, we are trying to get pictures and videos on the blog, but we are having problems getting them onto the computer and then uploading them. We should have them up tonight though so check back later for those.*
**Also, I will write about tuesday and today when we get back tonight so that should be up also**
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