Blackout

A couple of nights ago, one of our concerts was postponed because the entire town of Spoleto lost electricity.  The concert (which is now rescheduled for tonight) was actually one of my favorite pieces we’ve been working on here, and all of us were extremely sad to have it cancelled, so we are very excited to be able to perform tonight.

The venue for this concert is at the Rocca, a castle at the top of Spoleto where Lucrezia Borgia lived, and also where one of the popes in the Renaissance was also rumored to have lived for a time.  The Rocca is gorgeous!  Not only do you have a fantastic view of Umbria, but the walls are full of frescoes (mostly intact) and several lovely courtyards, one of which we are using for the concert.  Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain!  I don’t want the concert to be cancelled again!!

When it became clear that night that the electricity problem in Spoleto wouldn’t be solved any time soon, we gathered in the Piazza del Duomo and sang an impromptu concert on the porch of the Duomo.  TV cameras were already there because of the blackout, and they ate up the fact that we just spontaneously started singing.  I have to admit, it was pretty cool.  We could only get a couple songs out before the sun finally set, and then we just couldn’t see anything, so we had to stop.

After that, we all dispersed to go find something to do in the dark.  A couple friends and I went to a restaurant, where they had torches and candles brightly burning on the deck.  The kitchen obviously wasn’t fully working, so they gave us large portions of everything that was going to go bad due to lack of refrigeration:  huge hunks of cheese, mixed vegetables (raw as an antipasto, and then grilled veggies for me as a first course).  My friends had the same, only they had grilled meat for their dinner.

The electricity came back sometime around midnight, and there was much rejoicing outside my window at the Piazza del Mercato.

Concerts and more concerts

They have been keeping us busy here in Spoleto.  I am definitely working very hard for my money, and although this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, sometimes I wish our schedule could be a little less stressful.  The last three days have been full of rehearsals and concerts, all with only one or two hours of rest in between.  The worst of it was when we sang a concert at midnight and had to get up the next morning for an early morning mass.

Now that we have gotten several concerts under our belt, one would think the rehearsals would let up, but that is simply not the case, because we still have two more concerts to prepare for, each with different repertoire.  Today, though, we have only rehearsals, and I intend to relax a bit.  Tomorrow is our second day off, and I am going to go to Rome and take a tour of the Vatican…and hopefully I will get a chance to see the Coliseum as well.

In the meantime, though, I must away to another rehearsal and hope I still have some brain cells left to learn more music.

Ciao from Italy

So here I am in an internet cafe, trying very hard not to waste too much money…actually the internet cafe prices are pretty reasonable, but still I would rather be frugal while I’m only working with a small per diem.  So…on with the stories.

My travel to Spoleto took 24 hours.  At 9:45 AM, I met up with a couple friends in NJ and the three of us were driven to our meeting point in Center City, Philadelphia, where we were scheduled to take a bus to JFK at 11 AM.  Although we were supposed to load the bus at 10:45, the bus didn’t arrive until about 11:15.  We all piled on the bus, ready to go, until we realized that we were waiting for 2 people who were stuck in traffic trying to get to us.  By the time they arrived, it was 12:30!

(Warning:  the next couple of paragraphs are really only understandable if you know your way around New York)

Luckily, our flight from JFK wasn’t scheduled until 5, so we still had plenty of time.  But the bus driver clearly didn’t know how to get to JFK from Philadelphia, because instead of taking the Verrazano Bridge from the NJ Turnpike for a pretty much straight shot across Staten Island and the lower part of Brooklyn to JFK, he decided to go through Manhattan.  But he didn’t even go through the lower part of Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel; he decided to take the Lincoln Tunnel right through Midtown.

Since it was Sunday, one would think there wouldn’t be TOO much traffic in the city, but it was the day of the Gay Pride Parade, and we had to wait in traffic for it to pass!  A lot of people who don’t normally have a chance to see New York thought it was fun, but I was not amused.  Then, once he crossed Manhattan into Brooklyn, I thought he would get on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to JFK, but instead he went into the middle of Brooklyn (and through more traffic) to get on the Van Wyck Expressway.  By the time we got to JFK, it was 3:30 PM, and we only had an hour and a half before our flight was supposed to leave.

Once at the airport, the woman at the counter had a problem with my reservation because the people at the travel agency made my reservation under my maiden name instead of my married name.  Actually, what they did was to hyphenate my name, which is not the way it is on my passport.  I had a minor coronary when they told me I didn’t have a ticket on the flight…and it took three people to straighten it all out!  After everything was settled, the woman at the counter told me that I should change my passport to reflect the hyphenated name.  I told her that the hyphenated name was not my legal name, and she told me I was wrong.  I’m not sure why the woman at the airline would think she knows what my legal name is better than me, but I guess they must breed a certain special arrogance at Air France.

I arrived at the gate about 20 minutes before boarding time, with enough for me to grab an overpriced sandwich at the terminal so I didn’t starve to death.  I shouldn’t have worried, though, because 5:00 came and went without a call for boarding.  The crew was a half hour late getting to the gate, and then we had to wait another half hour before getting on the plane.  Once on the plane, we waited for another hour in line on the tarmac to take off.

Needless to say, we missed our connecting flight in Paris.  We also missed the next connecting flight, too, because of the time it takes to transfer and get through customs.  After going through customs in Paris, we had to go back through security, even though we our connecting flight was in the same terminal, and the people at Charles de Gaulle also had a problem with the name on my passport not matching the name on my ticket.  Although they figured out the problem a lot quicker than the folks in America, they did make fun of my poor French.

We also had to wait in the plane in Paris, this time for some connecting flights to arrive.  Once we got in the air, we were yet another 2 hours behind schedule.

We arrived in Rome at about 12:30 PM Italy time, which for us jetlagged travelers was about 6:30 AM East Coast time.  We had to wait, however, for the bus to Spoleto to arrive and be loaded with our bags, so they told us to get some lunch and come back at 2:00.  We ended up leaving the Rome Airport by 2:30, ready for an hour and a half bus ride to Spoleto.

Unfortunately, our bus driver was Ukranian, and he got completely lost!  He circled around Rome a couple times before finally finding the right highway to get on.  Our “guide” was no help at all and sat at the front of the bus with a deer-in-headlights look on her face.

Our bus had some seats with tables, so I sat in a seat facing the back, which was a bad idea.  The ride that was originally supposed to last an hour and a half lasted almost 3 hours, and for the last hour I was terribly car sick.  That was also the part where we started climbing the hills and going around and around in narrow, curvy roads.  Ugh.  While the rest of the singers were exclaiming about the beautiful scenery, it was all I could do to stay upright.

Our first rehearsal was supposed to be the day we arrived, Monday, at 6 PM.  But since we arrived in Spoleto at 5:30 PM (11:30 AM in Philly, 24 hours after we were supposed to leave), they pushed the rehearsal time to 7:45 to give us time to find our apartments and change.  But the folks at the festival totally screwed up everyone’s housing, so some people didn’t have a place to stay that first day!  Luckily, I ended up getting moved to a different apartment, but my new apartment was much closer to the center of town and a larger place, so I couldn’t really complain.

I had some frustrating experiences with the Italian pay phones trying to call Ray.  It was so frustrating, actually that I ended up getting an international cell phone, but that’s a story for another day, I think, since I am almost out of time here at the internet cafe.

Suffice to say that although those 24 hours were particularly hellish, the next morning was so beautiful, especially after a good night’s sleep, that I was finally able to appreciate how lucky I was to be in such a gorgeous Italian town.

4 Days (or, Why the Heck Are You Blogging Instead of Packing, Silly?)

The countdown is on. I had a dream the other night that I was in Italy but hadn’t packed anything, so I got into a packing frenzy and now have a suitcase out in my office, along with half my wardrobe thrown inside it. I think I need to pare down a bit…the idea is to travel lightly because I have to carry all this stuff myself from Rome to Umbria (okay, that’s not entirely true, since it’ll be in a bus most of that time, and apparently there will be porters taking our bags once we arrive. However, I have also been warned that I should travel with the porters just to make sure my bags get to the right place).

I’m so bad at this. I’m all about overpacking so that I’m über prepared. The idea of carrying all the stuff I’m going to need for 3 and a half weeks frightens me. You mean I can’t uproot my life and teleport everything over there? Man, just when you thought technology was working in your favor…

I’m also trying to get a jump start on all the music I have to learn. I received my music in the mail last Tuesday, and I’ve been busily marking my parts, but I still have yet to hear everything completely, so I’m trying to find recordings of all this stuff, some of which is a little obscure. Not that I don’t have confidence in my music-learning abilities–after all, I am a sight-reading fiend–but knowing what the piece sounds like just sharpens my edge that much more, and since it’s a long couple of flights from JFK to Charles de Gaulle and then on to Rome, I figure it would be nice to have something productive to listen to. Call me crazy. (Okay, I know you already do).

A Brush — Nay, a Spray Can — With Fame

I know I’m almost a week late in posting this, but I did have to put the old bragging rights out there. For the second time in six months, I’ve been in the presence of an old rock star. This time, it was at last week’s 150th Anniversary of the Academy of Music Ball in Philadelphia. Along with the star-studded cast of locals (Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia Singers, Dongwon Shin, and Angela Brown), we were honored with the presence of Ben Heppner and John Lithgow, with Tom Brokaw emcee-ing for the night.

But nobody seemed to care about that when I would tell friends and acquaintances I was singing at the Academy Ball. All they cared about was that A) Prince Charles and Camilla were attending, and B) Rod Stewart was going to be singing. Rod frickin’ Stewart. And I got to be a backup singer for Rod Stewart, singing “Forever Young” with him. Hey, he even gave the chorus a thumbs up while he was dancing around the stage.

So here’s the thing: as you might be able to tell, I’m not a huge Rod Stewart fan. There was a time when Rod was cool, he was rock and roll, and he was all those things, and I was four years old, but then he came out with “If You Want My Body,” and I’m pretty sure that finished it for me. And he never changed his hairstyle. Ever. Oy.

And the fact that he showed up to rehearsal with a gaggle of giggling bimbos didn’t do much to raise my opinion of him. But even I felt sorry for him at the concert when he was dancing around on stage in front of an audience of the Philadelphia society elite, who didn’t know what to do with him. They were mostly just quiet…deadly quiet…until I think at one point or another near the end of the song, they started clapping to the beat. But it certainly wasn’t a stadium filled with screaming fans, which I think would be a more appropriate setting for him.

After the concert, Their Royal Highnesses condescended to come backstage and shake the hands of the conductors and soloists. Prince Charles turned around and acknowledged the chorus and orchestra with a wave of his hand. Since we were about 60 feet away, it was hard to tell if he was smiling, but I’d like to think he was. All in all, it was a very nice experience, and hey, not a whole lot of people can say they were a backup singer to Rod Stewart. Or maybe most people don’t want to say it.

Caroling, Caroling, Up and Down

I have so many stories from this past month of caroling/rehearsals/concerts/wearing my voice out, I’m not sure where to start. As anyone who might have gone onto my calendar of events might have seen, I had no days off at all during the month of December, and hardly any even in November.

My 32nd birthday came and went with little fanfare. I got a nifty Canon Powershot Elph as a birthday/Christmas present from Ray, which I’m still trying to figure out, but this little thing takes way better pictures than my phone, that’s for sure. Plus, it’s got an underwater accessory which I will be getting before we go to Hawaii for the wedding. (You can look forward to many super duper photos in the future!)

From the day after Thanksgiving until the day before Christmas, my caroling group sang at Large Department Store on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I wasn’t there all the time…in fact, the only one of us that was there almost every day was our bass, and to say he was tired of Christmas caroling by the end of it would be an understatement.

Most of the time, the gig was pretty easy. The first week or so we tried to settle into a routine. We were asked to sing before the light show, which played every hour on the hour, but the area where the public congregated in the middle of the store was huge, and the ceiling went up at least 60 feet. Needless to say, no one could hear us. Management then had the bright idea of having us sing up by the organ console, where there was a microphone.

That seemed like a better idea all around. Even though the microphone was unidirectional (so whoever was standing in front of the mic was the one everyone heard the most), the crowd did hear us, and they even enjoyed us. We started playing games with the audience, having them sing with us, and so on, which I think pleased the parents especially because we were entertaining their kids and giving them a little bit of a break.

However, even though we were supposed to start the shows 15 minutes before the hour every hour, there was not always someone at the organ console to let us in. Our bass (I’ll just call him Bass for anonymity’s sake) managed to figure out how to get us into the “locked” area, but we still couldn’t figure out how to turn the microphone on. Finally, we found one of the tech guys, who very nicely gave us a tutorial on the microphone. He pulled out a secret drawer from inside the organ console (you can see that thing in the picture above; there’s a lot of buttons on that thing), and pointed at some labeled buttons. Just push “Muzak” to mute the Muzak in the store, press “amp” to mute/unmute the amp to the microphone, and then turn the microphone on, he tells us. When we’re done, he says, we should do all that in reverse to return the system to normal.

What he didn’t tell us was that the sound track for the light show was also on that system, and that it was on a timer. So when we accidentally ran long that first time on our own, the light show started, and Julie Andrew’s voice rang out, “Welcome, children to the holiday light show!” We quickly stopped singing mid-verse (”…and a partridge in a pear…oh, never mind”), turned the microphone off, hit the Muzak button, hit the amp button AND MUTED JULIE ANDREWS!

The light show kept going, but it looked really stupid at this point, with Christmas light ballerinas flashing on and off with no music or narration. We quickly hit the “amp” and “Muzak” buttons again, but to no avail. Soprano (it’s really her caroling group, not mine, although we’re working on the paperwork to become business partners) and I went barrelling through Large Department Store in our Victorian outfits, looking for someone, anyone, with a walkie-talkie that could get us in touch with the tech guy who showed us how the microphone worked. Bass stayed by the organ console and said, “If you don’t mind, I think I might make a couple educated guesses.” I gave him my blessing, since things couldn’t have gotten much worse. Tenor, not knowing what to do, just stayed put and watched Bass helplessly.

We made it up to the backstage area of the Dickens Village, which is sort of Command Central for the entire Christmas area. Of course, they had no idea how to contact the tech guy, but they did get security on the phone to help us out. However, by the time they had security on the phone, Bass had fixed the problem. He had ended up pushing the big red button above the button marked “LAUNCH,” which is a pretty ballsy move, if you think about it. After all, how many times have we been told to stay away from those kinds of buttons?

The whole fiasco maybe lasted four minutes, but in my mind, it lasted four hours. I don’t really think anyone in the audience really noticed that it was a fiasco, either. I was a basket case for the rest of the day, and on into the night, which was unfortunate, since I was singing Handel’s Messiah that night. The concert itself went well, but I kept having to refocus myself on the music almost every ten minutes.

And this was only halfway into the Christmas season!

Deck the Halls

I tried to post this on 11/26, but the post never happened. Better late than never…

Thanksgiving was much less stressful for me than I thought it would be. Since I’ve had almost no free time, I was beside myself as to what to prepare for my soon-to-be in-laws, since the last couple of times I got overly ambitious and they arrived 30-45 minutes early to watch me frantically put finishing touches on things in the kitchen. Ray’s mom, ever condescending (but well-meaning), keeps saying, “She’s just a baby. She’ll learn,” which grates on my very last nerve, considering the fact that they come EARLY before I’m ready for them. Last time she said that, my dad spoke up for me and said, “No, she actually did a really great job.” Thanks, Dad!

But I am learning. This year I told them to come at 5:30, planning on dinner to be ready by 5:00. They arrived at 5:15, and I was ready for them with appetizers. I was still putting finishing touches on the food, but everything was cooked and almost ready to put on the table. I was hoping she wouldn’t make any more condescending remarks, but at the end of dinner, she said, “You’re learning.” Well, I guess she’s right. I just wish it didn’t bother me so much when she said it.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Caroling season is in full swing. I started caroling at a Big Department Store in the middle of Philadelphia (I’m taking a page from Adam875’s book and trying for at least SOME anonymity), and although the whole story of how I got the gig needs to be left for another post, it is actually quite a nice gig. They have a secure dressing room for us to take our breaks in, and we’re pretty much left to our own devices. We have been wandering through the store, found out that although almost nobody shops in Menswear, there is a really cool place for us to stand and sing so that a good portion of the first floor can see and hear us.

Almost everyone who hears us actually stops and listens for the whole song, and sometimes even hangs out for two or three songs before they go back to their shopping. The parents are really pleased to point out to their kids, “Look, Timmy, Christmas carolers.” And one of my fellow carolers commented that we were probably the only people on Black Friday that the shoppers weren’t angry at. Shoppers would push and shove their way through the crowds, but when they saw us coming, they would smile and move aside.

We did have a strange incident, however, of a couple of teenagers we passed as we were walking to the escalator. They saw us and said, “Hey look, immigrants!” Immigrants? Um, how do you get immigrants from four people wearing Victorian-era outfits? Maybe immigrants who stepped out of a time machine. Those kids must be products of the Philadelphia public school system; obviously well-educated.

Brush with Fame

A lot of times, friends complain to me that they want to come see me perform, but they never have a chance to see me because I don’t tell them far enough ahead of time. I see their point…after all, it’s not like I have a mailing list anymore, and usually when I think to tell friends about upcoming concerts, I do so a day or even hours before a performance.

My reply to those friends, however, is that if you really want to see me perform, you can just go on my website to the events page, and thanks to the wonders of Google Calendar, I have embedded an automatically updated calendar of all my upcoming concerts, both in NY and Philadelphia.

But I know we all are a passive lot. We don’t want to have to go out and find information, we want it delivered to us. And we don’t want just any information; we want to pick and choose who tells us what, and how often. And let’s face it: I could put together a mailing list—heck, I have a mailing list—but you, my audience, keep changing your email addresses without telling me, relegating my list to the junk mail folder, and I don’t want to be a spammer. Hence the blog you can read at your convenience and the calendar you can access whenever you want.

The other reason I don’t actively advertise my performances is because I’m tired of the disappointment that inevitably happens when friends say, “Oh sure, I’ll be there” and either cancel at the last minute or say later that they couldn’t afford the ticket. I’m poor and I’m busy too, so I understand when someone gives me that excuse, but then I stop believing they actually want to see me.

Okay, the self-pity portion of this post is over.

Tonight I sang in the U.S. premiere of “Ecce Cor Meum” by Paul McCartney at Carnegie Hall. If any of you are now smacking your heads and saying, “Why didn’t you tell me?” see above. I know probably more of you would have been interested in going to this concert rather than the last few concerts (Prokoviev’s Alexander Nevsky, Debussy’s Nocturnes) simply because Paul McCartney’s celebrity far outshines that of the New York Philharmonic and eclipses The Philadelphia Singers completely. But to be honest, even if I knew people wanted to see it, I thought the concert would have sold out way in advance. Imagine my surprise when I saw empty seats.

Apparently lots of famous people showed up to the concert, however. Fellow choristers reported sightings of Woody Harrelson, Alec Baldwin, and Jerry Seinfeld. I think I passed Clint Eastwood in the hall after the show, but I was more interested in getting my jacket and leaving that it didn’t register until the girl in front of me said, “Hey, that was Clint Eastwood.”

Paul McCartney showed up to all of our rehearsals. There were a lot of choristers who approached him with records and books they wanted him to sign, but I was too shy. I thought of taking a candid picture of him, but I felt like that was really too paparazzi, so I hung back. Some people brought their cameras on stage, and I did too, although there were all sorts of signs backstage saying that photography on the stage level was forbidden. But when Paul came out on stage, I couldn’t make myself take a picture. I guess I’m too much of a goody two-shoes.

However, when we left the stage at the end of the concert, Paul was there, greeting all the performers one by one. He was kissing all the women on the cheek, and when it was my turn, he said in that famous Liverpool accent, “Pucker up,” and we exchanged cheek kisses.

So although the only tangible evidence of my brush with fame is probably a few of his skin cells on my left cheek (and I don’t think I can bring myself to never wash that cheek again), I will always have the memory of the night I kissed Paul McCartney. And that’s something nobody can buy on eBay.

If you’re bummed you missed the concert, you can hear it in streaming audio on www.npr.org. I’m in the alto section…see if you can pick out my voice!

HallowThanksMas

Yesterday I did my first caroling gig of the season, all bedecked in my Victorian finery. We were hired by an Acme store (for those of you not on the East Coast, that’s a big supermarket chain) for a grand reopening of their store.

I have to say, this gig definitely goes into the category of bizarre. Here we were, strolling through the produce section in costume, singing Christmas carols on Nov. 4. Not only were we competing with the muzak being piped through the store and the “clean up on aisle six” pages over the loudspeaker, but we had added competition of people dressed as pilgrims, hired to wander through the store and hand out what I can only guess was leftover Halloween candy.

Talk about sending a confusing holiday message.

I would say this was a pretty low pressure job, but we had also apparently been advertised in the paper, apparently, and a couple people came to the store specifically to hear us sing. Our two fans hung out by the canteloupes for a while until we strolled back to the floral department, and then they did some shopping while they were there. Hey, I don’t blame them. If I hadn’t been on the clock, I would have done some shopping too.

How the Grinch Stole Ramadan

I’m going to try to write this out quickly because it’s midnight and I have to get up in six hours for yet another day of singing myself hoarse.

Tonight was the final night of Alexander Nevsky at the NY Philharmonic (which went very well, by the way) , and there was a little bit of panic backstage before the beginning of the concert. The chorus is usually called 15 minutes before curtain, but on nights when we get paid, like tonight, most people show up early to collect their checks. So it was incredibly strange that a handful of very reliable people did not show up at call time, or five minutes later, or even ten minutes later. A mere two minutes before we went on stage, they showed up, dripping with sweat (one of whom wasn’t even in his tux yet!), with reports that someone had been hit by a train on the 1 line and the trains were suspended from 28th Street all the way up to 96th (Lincoln Center is at 66th Street, so this was clearly a problem).

Normally, we singers budget extra time in case things like this happen, because it’s New York, and it’s best to be prepared because you never know what new disaster might strike. And normally in situations like this when the subway service gets suspended, we all get out of the subway and try to hail a cab along with the rest of the hundreds of riders.

However, tonight is the final day of Ramadan, and about 80% of the cab drivers in the city were at prayers, so there were hardly any cabs to hail. These poor schmucks had to hoof it or bus it from as far away as 110th Street, and they barely made it there on time. Oy. I’m just thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t on any of those trains. And I’m hoping against hope I don’t get stuck in traffic tomorrow when I have to zoom from my church job 100 miles away in NJ back to Lincoln Center for a different concert. Please, send good thoughts my way. Or if you happen to have something good to offer the traffic gods, I’d appreciate a sacrifice or two in my favor…