Monthly Archives: April 2014

NYC Day One

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As I was up from 3:00 a.m. Tuesday until 11:00 last night, I’m happy to be sitting here at 5:56 talking to you. :-D

I have a funny story. It’s not funny-ha-ha (well, it kind of is), but it might make you smile. The funny story, however, will have to wait until I have a moment to update later, because, well…it’s 5:56 a.m. and I have to be downstairs at 6:25 to meet 104 of my closest friends.

For those who follow on Facebook: I’ll update there when I’ve told the tale, and you can come back over. For those who don’t, check back around noon or so. Once the days get going around here, it’s hard to stop them, but I’ll see if I can’t connect the ol’ iPad on the bus ride into the city. Good? Good.

Today, it’s Today (we didn’t have time to do it yesterday, which happens to be part of the “funny” story), then Central Park, the village, shopping in Times Square, dinner at Bubba Gump, then the short walk to the Majestic Theatre for Phantom. Good day planned.

Too bad our red knight didn’t win at Medieval Times. Hmmm. Fink’s knight lost. Who knew? What’s that now…nine for nine? *fist pull*

FO till later — many hugses to my fiends

NYC!

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Today’s the day, fiends. Rather, tonight’s the night.

At 9 p.m. EST, two charter buses pull out of the high school parking lot for a 10-hour ride to the big city. While it’s not as much of a “vacation” for me as it is for my students (104 people, my responsibility, very little sleep), I absolutely love watching their reactions and hearing their stories. Of the 105 going, fewer than 10 have been to New York. Out of that number, only three students have been. So this will be fun.

First up when we arrive tomorrow morning (Wednesday) is breakfast at Cucina, then out for a stroll around Rockefeller Plaza so the kids can have a look at NBC’s Today show. After that, it’s one of the high points for me: the performance at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. After the gig…the party begins. :-D

I’ll try to update you every day with photos and silly stories. But for now…gotta finish getting the war paint on and getting out the door.

Into the snow. Oy.

Happy day — I’ll see you on the other side!

Preflight observations

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Four days and counting until I report to the school house at 7 p.m. as well as 7 a.m., so we can board the charter buses and blast off to NYC.

  1. It’s surprising how many people think I’m nuts for doing this. I hear it quite often. You’re taking a hundred people to New York? Whoa. Have fun with that. Well, thanks. I will. Ninety-nine percent of the people going have never been to the #1 tourist destination in the US, and I love seeing and hearing their reactions as I experience it with them.
  2. Although I don’t sleep much at all, it’s still fun. You’d think that after enduring the 10-hour bus rides at night, the risky weather, the worry about obvious big-city safety issues, the Lincoln Tunnel traffic, seeing Phantom on Broadway, Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, Little Italy, Central Park, Rockefeller Plaza, or Medieval Times in Lyndhurst — all for the umpteenth time — I’d be sick of the whole mess. But that’s never the case.
  3. Performing in our venue is unforgettable. Many choral directors do the “workshop” type thing when they take their choirs to NYC. Those are great and educational and fun, but they’ve never been my style — probably because of my decades-long, iron-fisted death grip on control. I’d rather schedule a place for my singers to perform, do the gig as early as possible, then get to the partyin’. I can’t think of a more beautiful venue to sing in NYC than the Cathedral Church of St. John, the Divine. Awesome place, in the most literal sense of the word, as folks are truly in awe when they first walk in.
  4. The memories are truly special. I’d need several hands to count how many times I’ve seen and heard former students talk about what a life-changing experience choir tour was. That has to be one of the best feelings for me about the whole thing. I once became a bit upset during a performance at St. John because I looked up to the back row while conducting and saw a couple of basses (both great kids, leaders in the section, beautiful voices) grinning, ear-to-ear: peculiar and basically unacceptable behavior while singing Lenten music. They immediately sought me out after the gig and said, “We are sorry, Jax, but we were just blown away by our sound in this place. We couldn’t believe it.” I’ll take that.

I’m always “on” my choirs about professionalism, behavior, class, respecting the music, recognizing the beauty in things, and being a blessing to people. Sometimes I forget how much of a blessing (in good times and bad — especially the times when they want to see me take the long walk off a short pier…like, you know, now) they are to me. Tour usually brings that to bear in many good ways.

And that’s all the nicey-nicey I got this morning. Coffee, the shower, the road, the school house, in that order. TGI flippin’ Friday.

Have a great day, fiends!

Off center

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Somethin’ ain’t right.

J’ever have one of those days? Yesterday didn’t feel right at all, and today feels even wronger. Maybe it’s the weather forecast for my upcoming New York tour. Eight days out, and it’s not looking too good for the home team: 50s and rain. Hmm. Matches my mood.

Maybe it’s the piling up of as-yet-unlearned spring music, on account of tour taking up most of my rehearsal time for the last three months. Six weeks remain till the spring concert. We can do it, but it’ll be close.

However, listen to this. One of my high school choir students was seriously injured while cutting wood last weekend, and ended up with a severe head injury. He spent a week in the hospital and is now home. Last Monday, I asked the choir if they might be willing to donate 50 cents or a dollar towards a gift card for the boy, as he is an avid hunter and would probably love to spend some time at a nearby outdoor sportsman’s store after he recuperated. Three days later, I had enough for a $100 gift card for him. How cool is that? Someone bought an enormous get-well card, and they all signed it. One of the kids delivered it last night. I hope it brightened the boy’s day, because it certainly brightened mine. Once again, I’m convinced that teenagers get a bad rap a lot of the time. And here, I’ve restored some of your faith in the youth of today. You’re welcome; please pay me in chocolate.

And yet…somethin’ still ain’t right. I like to put names on things; if I can label what’s wrong, I think I cope better. The devil you know, and all that. How do you handle stuff like this? I know I should just hit the treadmill and walk it out. Surprisingly, it often helps to clear the cobwebs.

But for now…the coffee, the shower, and the road to the school house. Happy Tunesday!

FO

Ain’t that somethin’…

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Again, many thanks to awesome RtB fiend Ross for the great guest post yesterday. I loved it, because it got me thinking about lots of songs from my past, and indeed, music in general, and its mysterious power to affect heart and soul far more than any spoken word.

Isn’t it something how music can evoke such strong, associative memories, as if the events just happened recently? For instance, I can’t listen to Elvis’s gospel music without thinking of my mother, even though it was in the early 70s that she and I were in the same room with those records. I can’t hear the old close-harmony male quartets of the 1950s without thinking of Dad, and how he’d let me play his Suddenly it’s the Hi-Lo’s (before I ever knew what a Gene Puerling was) and The Four Lads Sing Frank Loesser albums over and over and over without ever saying Turn that stuff down!, like he did when I played my Beatles, Monkees, Al Green, Jackson Five and Rod Stewart records.

I can’t hear songs from The Sound of Music, The King and I or My Fair Lady without being transported back to my living room floor as a 14-year-old, sitting in front of the enormous stereo that looked like this and memorizing every note of every tune, wishing that I could play the King of Siam or Henry Higgins on Broadway, because men got the best songs. (To this day, I can recite the completely mean-spirited — but delicious — Why Can’t the English?, verbatim.)

But the nostalgia isn’t all that gets me about listening to music. Cripes, I could write a dissertation on this. Being a singer, I’m unsurprisingly partial to the places songs take me (the definition of “song” being poetry set to music, therefore sung, as opposed to a sonata or symphony or concerto, which is instrumental). Regardless of the subject matter, some songs resonate with me for years; decades, even, and the connection is largely emotional. If you were to do a study (and I’m certain someone has, somewhere, sometime) on the psychological effects of the chromatic-fourth descending bass line in modern song, I’m sure you would find important links to certain emotions — mostly, melancholy or outright sadness. Get out your guitar or piano and play these changes in a slow four:

Am
E7/G#
C/G
F# dim

That progression, present in dozens of songs I can think of, and probably a hundred more, dictates a definite set of emotions. Consider just a few songs in which it’s used exactly as above, or pretty darn close:

Everything Must Change (Bernard Ighner – recorded by countless artists)
A Song for You (Leon Russell – recorded by countless artists)
Chim-Chim Cher-ee (Richard & Robert Sherman – Mary Poppins)
Hotel California (The Eagles)
Michelle (The Beatles)
My Funny Valentine (written by tortured genius Lorenz Hart)
This Masquerade (Leon Russell)

I can’t think of many (any?) “happy,” chirpy songs in which that device is employed, though they may exist. And I don’t think it’s entirely because there are few happy songs in minor keys. It’s a musical trick, designed to elicit the same emotional results every time: disquietude, nostalgia, sadness, loss, loneliness, uncertainty. And for me, it works, without fail.

I could go on for hours, but I have to get stuff done. So how about you? What music is transcendent and intensely meaningful for you? I’ll bet you can think of quite a few examples.