Carnegie Hall

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There are two pages of photos, be sure to click page two at the bottom of the text.

For those of you who don’t know all of the details of why we are here, the Christchurch City Chorus was one of 12 chorus’s to be chosen from the 34 who competed in Calgary in 2007 to participate in a show in Carnegie Hall. Seven of the 12 chosen decided to participate. Christchurch is the only non American chorus to have been chosen, so we feel extremely privileged to have received the invitation.

On the 14th of February we began our rehearsals for the show at Carnegie Hall. Mid afternoon the chorus got together for the first time in New York in a conference room at the hotel. It went well, but we decided to call an extra rehearsal for the following morning as well just to make sure everything was cemented in our minds. After our rehearsal the other chorus’s joined us to practice the massed songs. Our chorus is the largest, at 56 singers onstage; the others range from about 20 to 40. - That seems rather ironic that we have travelled the furthest and paid the most, yet brought the most amount of people.

Being that it was Valentines Day, Jahan and I had pre booked to go to a restaurant called Mesa. Mesa is owned by Bobby Flay who is a celebrity chef from Food TV. - We had hoped to got o The London (Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant) but we couldn’t get a booking; plus it’s US$150 per course!

The show at Carnegie was split into two. Four of the chorus’s performed on Sunday the 15th of February, the other three (including us) preformed on Monday the 16th. On Sunday morning we had our extra rehearsal, and then boarded the bus at 1:00pm for Carnegie Hall. The Hall itself was not as ‘Grand’ as I expected, yet not as intimidating from a performers perspective either. It is quite small and the audience is close to the stage. The walls are a plain cream colour with gold trim. They told us that no photos were allowed, but if you know us very well, you will understand that we take a camera with us everywhere-subsequently several (about 60) photos were taken!

We had been told that the Hall has amazing acoustics, so I was really surprised when the first chorus was reasonably quiet. - We were seated near the front. I think they could hear themselves quite clearly on stage so they pulled back their singing a little. The first two chorus’s were OK. We struggled to understand the story they were portraying through their MC work and songs. The second two were much better with the last chorus singing at a high musical level - well I thought so anyway.

Monday was a very long and busy day. We began with rehearsal at a church near the hotel at 8:45am. The rehearsal went really well, we sounded great and were excited about the evening show. Lunch was delivered to the rehearsal and we had half an hour to get ourselves organized for the show.

I hadn’t felt any nerves as yet, which was worrying. For me, if I’m nervous a few hours beforehand, I’m fine when it comes to the real thing. We arrived at Carnegie for the second time in two days. They showed us to our dressing rooms, which was a large room with lights around the mirrors… it was beginning to feel real. Our chorus was scheduled to be on stage last, the finale I guess subsequently our dress rehearsal was also last, so we had a lot of time to put on our make up and have our hair done. The moment I stepped on stage for the dress rehearsal, the nerves hit- which I was quite thankful for. We had quite an audience for our rehearsal (the chorus’s who had sung the day before). - They are the hardest to please, but they gave us a huge applause. For our last song, we had planned to use some props, but during the dress rehearsal we were told we could not use them due to fire danger (they were large piece of material) so, being the flexible Kiwi’s that we are, we made some quick changes to our plan and it still worked really well.
We were so privileged to have bought our own hairdresser with us. I truly felt like a real star when I had the chance to have my hair done professionally.

Finally the time came for us to go onstage. We entered in a ‘party’ mode singing parody words to the classic song “Celebration”, followed by six others portraying New Zealand culture and our environment. We finished with “New Zealand Song” and received a standing ovation.

The mind-blowing experience of the past few days and the entire journey of the past year was topped off by an evening dinner cruise on the Hudson River, taking in the Manhatten sky line, joined by all of the chorus’s who participated in the show.

A little more New York sight seeing to come in the next blog, then off to Quebec for the last leg of our journey.

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Comments

[Mummy Su]

How exciting!
How exciting to be part of the 'Carnegie' history! You looked very glam.Lizzie. I might add,your hairdresser did a lovely job! Did you feel like one of the celebs.? The cruise looked like fun.I love to get on any harbour overseas at night,a whole different feel! What a fab. time you are both having!xxxxxxxxx