Looking Back on the Sept.
17th Appearance at Carnegie Hall
The bus loads of
Harmonizers stopped outside of Carnegie Hall in New York City late Sunday morning,
Sept. 17th after driving several hours from Reading, PA, and their
contest and convention weekend.
The chorus was hired to
appear on the 10th annual Circle Wind Concert – a Japan-U.S. Chorus
Festival at Carnegie scheduled for 5 pm.
These concerts help raise funds for world tragedies such as 9/11 in NYC,
the Tsunami in Japan also in 2011, and now the Hurricanes in Texas and Florida
in the US. The chorus appeared on this
festival one other time right after the Tsunami.
This year’s concert
featured a group from Spain, Japan Choral Harmony; a Circle Wind Boys and Girls
Choir; a Japanese girls’ choir; Tohoku
University mixed chorus and the university male chorus; and the Harmonizers,
who sang last. The Alexandria chorus
sang Neil Diamond’s “America,” “There Must Be a City” spiritual from THE
FAIRFIELD FOUR, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “All You Need Is Love” and “Blow,
Gabriel, Blow.” When the cheering audience and other performers called for an
encore, the Harmonizers performed “New York, New York” as we had done on the
2011 show.
The concert began will
all countries represented on the stage and each country’s singers sang their
National Anthem.
The busses had left
Reading at 7:15 am with a stop for lunch en route. After a solid rehearsal in a
sixth floor rehearsal room in Carnegie, there was a break for dinner and
changing into the black suits with tie.
Terry Reynolds and
director Joe Cerutti spoke during
the Harmonizer segment of the show. The
entire show lasted about two and a half hours. We also all sang a song in
Japanese (which we had learned on the busses en route.) that was the finale of
the show.
There were a number of
Japanese folks that had been with us the first time and so those musical
friendships continued.
After the successful
show, guys changed back into casual travel gear and many loaded the first bus
to head back to Maryland and Virginia. The remaining 30 or so singers and
family members went to Applebee’s for an afterglow with other performers. There was a lot of singing –each group taking
turns singing another song. Since nearly
no one could communicate in words, we sang to each other. When we sang “New York, New York” again, our
new friends came and did the chorus kick line too! We sang part of the
“Chicago” medley and that really got the young Japanese singers excited, as
they knew the songs from Chicago! When we sang “Keep The Whole World Singing,”
there were no dry eyes - the essence of the song with singers from around the
world. We had to rush to our bus parked outside! A fond farewell to all.
The afterglow gang got
back to Virginia about 3 am.
This event was
certainly one more “Breathless Moment” for Harmonizers and especially for the
many men who had not been on the Carnegie stage before. Twelve year old Micky Robertson certainly had a milestone moment. He was interviewed by Japanese media.
Luckily we did not have
to do risers, sound or such in this famous theater. YeEd hears from members that the venue was beautifully renovated
since our last appearance there.
Shawn Tallant deserves
much credit for the success of this event having worked for months as our primary
contact with the Japanese organizers of the concert, plus working on all
communications, organizing, arranging busses and coordinating hotel payments
for our singers.
Also credit is due to Bob Rhome who did amazing work in
helping the members prep for packing, bus departures and scheduling. His bus
co-captains were Steve Murane, Clyde
Crusenberry and Rob Barnovsky. Craig Kujawa collected for the
afterglow. Certainly director Joe Cerutti and associate director Tony Colosimo and choreographer Carlos Barillo helped get the chorus up
to their peak after a long bus ride! Chorus manager Mark Klostermeyer helped get the large chorus from point A to point
B on time.
Until next time – editorjack!
(This message is prepared for your review if you
were there, for your information if you had to miss, and as a historical record
of the great things going on each week during the 70th year of the
Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd
