Let me first start off by saying, if you have not had the opportunity to see the Voices of Gotham you should really make a point of doing so. I assure you, you will not regret it. But lets not get too ahead of myself.
The day after my fantastic barbershop-encrusted birthday festivities I had another bbshop packed day. The day began with a meeting at Mary Jo's. This meeting was between the Regional Convention Committee (RCC) and the HCC Convention Committee. As the CAC (competition assisting chorus) we have lots of fun duties and this meeting was to get us acquainted with all of them and with our personal counterpart on the RCC. It was a very productive meeting, and as always it was delightful to get to see Sweet Ads who we don't run into every week because they're off with their own choruses.
No sooner was the meeting over but I was in the car with the lovely Ms. Sharon Tindle and and delightful Ms. Marianne Glennon on our way into Manhattan. That evening the chorus had a gig singing at the Barclay Hotel. We met up in a room off the main lobby and were provided with tea, coffee, water and some delightful snacks. After Scott warmed us up and determined a good standing order for our sound it was off to the lobby to start singing. For our first set we sang on the carpet in the middle of the room facing the Christmas Tree. For our second set we decided to move our location we weren't competing as much with the noise from the bar right behind us. So we moved to the other side of the lobby onto the tile facing the entrance. It was great and we even got some of our audience to come and sing with us.
When all was said and done we headed back to our little side room to gather our things. Sabrina and I announced that we would be journeying downtown to the Voices of Gotham Show if anyone would care to join us. As it happens our friend Steffi already had tickets and was headed that way, so we traveled to the show with her and her friend. When we got to the show Sabrina and I still had to buy our tickets so Steffi and her friend went in to get seats. When we walked into the church to see where they had gone we found them -- right in the front row. This was particularly amusing to Sabrina and I because we didn't even decide we were going to try and go to the VoG show until later after my birthday party, and even then it was under the condition that we could make it there in time after our gig at the Barclay. So despite all that we went, and got front row seats - sweet deal.
The show opened with a Christmas song staged as snowball fight! It was fantastic; they used the chairs as snow banks to hide behind, they threw and reacted to invisible snowballs and made excellent use of frozen images versus moving through the action. It set the stage for the whole concert and had the audience ready and waiting for more.
I'm not sure that I could pick a favorite song but I could certainly do personal highlights. For me they would be Waltz of the Sugarplumb Fairy, Brown Eyed Girl and Loch Lomond. Waltz is my long time favorite piece in the Nutcracker so that automatically places it in my heart. I enjoyed the choice of having the chorus behind us and the lights out. I cant lie though, there was a big part of me waiting for some delightfully farcical men in tutus type dancing, but alas there was none. Brown Eyed Girl featured three fantastic and completely different soloists. It was sung and staged as an exciting men's college a cappella group would do it, and that's exactly why I loved it. Loch Lomond - where do I even start? Their director, the accomplished and very friendly Mr. Larry Bomback sang the solo because due to a cold, the planned soloist was out of commission for the evening. It began with the quartet onstage and then added in quartet by quartet and they had some of the guys still up in the loft so it felt like the sound was coming from all around you. And the coolest part, ugh the COOLEST part? That would have the be the last time through when all the men are singing like bagpipes and the sound is just vibrating off of every surface in the place and you get covered in goosebumps. Mmmh Loch Lomond - such a meep worthy song.
So we're sitting in our sweet front row seats with Steffi and Neal and the gang. We're enjoying the show and all of the fantastic chapter quartets. And then we get to enjoy, for the second night in a row, the fantastic visual and vocal stylings of 'Round Midnight. Besides just enjoying these guys perform I think my favorite part would have to be when they walked out to the thunderous applause of the audience and were waving hello and they saw us camped out there in the front row and gave us that look like "Well hello, haven't we seen you somewhere before?" Tehe.
When the show was over we got to run around a little bit and say hello to friends. There were several Hickory Tree ladies there, including our friend Carolyn Schmidt and her lovely daughter Andrea. While we didn't have time to sing a tag with them before they had to scoot out to catch their bus/train, it was nice to finally meet Andrea who we had heard lots about.
In our post-show milling around we had to make sure we went up to say hi to Larry and tell him how much we enjoyed the show. (Especially because we were reading his bio and saw he went to Haverford and said to ourselves "Was he a Humtone?" - the answer of course being, yes.) We got to talking about how great the staging was, and he said it was their goal that no two songs should look alike. Well I say he achieved it. My sentence to sum up the show would be"The chorus is dynamic and their staging is as engaging as it is refreshing." Brava Gentlemen!
We headed to the back of the church to say our hello's the rest of the 'RM gentlemen and congratulate then on (another) show well done. We were very sad to have to turn down their invitations to come to the after glo, but we still had to catch a train back up town, drive to Mawah to get my car, and then head home to Purchase to sleep before getting up early the next day to drive to South Jersey and go caroling with ladies from our chorus. The allure of handsome men singing is very strong, so even though we didn't go to the glo we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we had been invited with great joy by a group of guys we enjoy and respect.
The next day, despite a distinct lack of sleep and some of the grossest rain I've ever seen, Sabrina and I journeyed to south Jersey to sing at the Shoppes at Crosskey. Well the shoppes were a strip mall and the octet went from store to store to spread holiday harmony and get in out of the rain. One of my favorite memories from the day was in a store where they only wanted a small quartet and this group sang.
Our last stops were to the two resteraunts in the plaza. At the last one we were informed by the owner that she had been really excited for us to come sing today because she had this big holiday party booked. The party however, was booked for the wrong location and while she was still quite happy to have us there she was bummed that she didnt have a larger crowd for us to sing to. We happily sang for the few tables in the dining area and then sat down for complimentary bread and tea. We were water logged but in good spirits. As Jeannie put it "we all put in our 500% today."
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