Did I Mention That I Sang at Carnegie Hall?

“Hallelujah!”

Maybe being only one voice out of ninety doesn’t exactly make me a star, but the experience was as exciting as if I had had the stage to myself.

It happened like this:  No longer having use of company computers after I retired, I immediately purchased my first desktop PC.  As with every new gadget I acquire, I spent hours just practicing, playing games, and searching the internet.  My internet provider at the time was AOL and one day in mid 1997 I noticed a “click here” button that said, “SING at Carnegie Hall”.  Upon clicking out of curiosity I read that a chorus was being recruited from across the country. But what got my attention was that the conductor would be none other than John Rutter from England.   Our choirs in recent years had sung many of his compositions and his recordings with the Cambridge Singers are among my favorites.  Added to that, the chosen work for the performance would be “Messiah” by Handel.

This was the perfect combination for me and what did I have to lose by applying?  The announced schedule involved being in New York over the Thanksgiving weekend for the concert on Sunday afternoon.  I called to tell Sue to go online and retrieve an application form; the deadline was August 31, giving us only a couple of days to make our decision.  In 1997 using the internet was much less commonplace than now, but we submitted the forms by email the next day.  The second step was to send a vocal recording to Mid America Productions.

Billy Trotter, organist at Northminster, graciously agreed to work with us.  The sound system for the church was capable of making cassette tapes and each of us sang a verse of Amazing Grace to Billy’s accompaniment.  I certainly didn’t profess to be a soloist, but I convinced myself that they were looking for people who could stay on pitch, had good diction and could project their voices.  In any case, within a week both of us had been accepted to sing with 90 other choristers recruited online.

The internet played an even greater role in this project as message boards were set up to allow the participants to get to know each other in advance.  We could talk to the others in the chat room, speculating on just what we could anticipate.  In a planned group chat in November, Maestro Rutter came on to give last minute instructions to the group while we made notes in our scores.  (Today we could have “Skyped” and actually heard him speak to us.) 

We flew into New York on Wednesday, enjoying watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in person.  We were booked in the Grand Hyatt hotel at a great location near Grand Central Station.  The first rehearsal was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Thursday afternoon at a nearby rehearsal hall.  On the stroke of 5:00 Rutter entered to our applause, nodding his acknowledgement. Mounting the podium he announced the page number, gave a downbeat and we were off—no preliminaries or warm up.  

Most of the people had good choral background and were proficient in singing large works of music.  Here and there we learned that some had never sung “Messiah”, which surprised me.  But in my alto section I sat by a New Yorker who sang regularly in the choir at St. John the Divine.  Her diction was flawless.  Rutter’s demeanor was very low key but his methods were exacting.  To achieve an harmonious blend from so many disparate voices was a credit to his genius.  

We rehearsed on Friday and Saturday, then reported early to Carnegie Hall on Sunday for a final run through.  Four professional soloists were engaged for our concert and we were accompanied by the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra.   We had a rather long wait until performance time, but a reporter from the New York Times was making the rounds interviewing various members of the chorus.  

When the curtain rose at 3 p.m. I was surprised to see that the every seat in the house was occupied.   The audience was enthusiastically appreciative, standing for a long ovation at the conclusion.  And in the Monday edition of the New York Times, there was a picture of the group with a long article about this “first-of-its kind” concert.