musicbytori

musicbytori

Search This Blog

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Days of the Music (Living in the Spotlight)

Monday, May 17, 2010- Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Show choir? No. Professional choir? Yes.
I've been in my High School Choir for 4 years now. It's been the most fun, greatest experience in school...the class I actually look forward to attending. However, it hasn't been nearly as professional as this year. For our spring pieces, we spent two full, long days advertising and publicizing our concert evening of the 18th.

Monday, May 17, 2010:
What time do/did you get up on a school day? 7 or 8? Well, on the 17th, I got up at 4:30am in order to be at school at 5:30am just for a "short" news debut to advertise for our concert the following day. It was incredibly hectic. We performed three of our songs, instead of four, because the NEWS INTERVIEWER was late. The rest of the TV crew was set and ready to go, but the interviewer/broadcaster was late! We were all a bit annoyed but put our smiling faces on for the camera. Sadly, we were told not to wave and say "hi mom."

Tuesday, May 18, 2010:
This is the day. The day we've been practicing for! No turning back now. Yet another event was planned before our concert, day of, to get more of an audience. From around 10: 15am-1:40pm choir went to the Hale Koa hotel to sing for over 800 veterans. It was quite the show, too. Since we were the "featured entertainment," we were served a 3 course meal that was incredibly delicious. We lead the Star Spangled Banner and Hawaii's State song, and performed our special song originally for our concert, Voices That Care. Since David Foster, Linda Thompson-Jenner, and Peter Cetera, writers of Voices That Care, intentionally picked a story about soldiers going to war, our performance spoke very dearly to multiple veterans.

Concert Time! The evening has come and the curtains are opening. It's show time. Everyone's in their pretty red dresses and pearl necklaces, and set for stardom (it's an all girls choir, explaining the dresses). We walk up to the stage and start off our concert with the classic, Star Spangled Banner. Following that, we have a short section of the younger, middle school choir, singing their songs before the suspenseful, tear-causing half. We close the concert with two songs featuring both choirs, middle and high school, Vois Sur Ton Chemin and Voices That Care. These pieces really set the night apart from any other school choir concert.

I can truly say a lot of hard work went into those two days just to give us a couple hours in the spotlight. It was all worth it in the end and I'm greatful I got to be a tiny slice in the cake we spent months slaving over a hot oven for. I can't wait till junior year when I hopefully return to get my next 15 minutes of fame.
'Till next week,
musicbytori