Dank Sei Dir Gott

A few months ago I posted that I would be memorizing 204 pages of German fabulousness in three months. I have to say, this has got to be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. 3rd quarter is generally the time that I am the most out of my mind during the school year, and whenever I did have free time, do you think I wanted to spend it memorizing German? Definitely not. Fortunately in February we had a run through rehearsal so that we could hear what the thing sounded like in person and not on a CD. Helpful, but still, one run through? Puuuuhhhhllleeeaaase.
So the middle of March rolled around and I only had about 1/2 the thing memorized. Amidst major panic I started asking around and sure enough the rest of the chorus was feeling overwhelmed, as well. As one person said, “no problem! I will have it memorized for sure by April 6th!” April 6th, of course, was the day AFTER our last performance. I always feel like this, that if I just had one more concert it would for sure be perfect. On the day of the first performance we were not at all solid, and John Oliver (our director) mentioned that we might just use our scores, and we all cheered. We had absolutely forgotten it was April 1st. In the next breath John said “April Fools!”
John’s jokes usually go over well, but I think our silence expressed how unfunny we thought it was.
Anyway, once you don’t have your score and your cheat sheet (this is only one side)…


…it’s surprising how much you do have memorized. That is not to say that the first night was that great. Well, it was, but there were definite scary moments and one awful moment where I came in on a major entrance with the tenors. I did it again the second night! The third night and at Carnegie Hall I finally got my act together.
Since I was in New York less than twenty four hours, I don’t have many impressions of it, other than that there are lots of tall buildings and an excess of taxis. What did strike me as crazy was going through the flooded out portion of Rhode Island on the train. Sometimes the water was actually on the tracks and we had to slow way down. These are not the best pictures, but I was, after all, on a moving train.


The concert at Carnegie was great, what a gorgeous place! While there were a few scary moments due to the really loud organ right behind us that we weren’t expecting, it was a very cool experience. Some people were starting to get sick but there was no way they were skipping the concert after all that memorizing. But after four days in a row we are all pretty vocally exhausted, so perhaps it’s just as well that it was our last performance.  I mentioned that we couldn’t possibly do anything more difficult than this in the chorus, and some of the other ladies just patted me on the back and told me to go on thinking that.
Our New York Times Review (can you find me in the photo?) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/arts/music/07elijah.html

Joe Kohen for The New York Times

It was a marvelous experience, but I am not sorry the memorization is at an end. Now I can actually concentrate on something else, like my day job!!!!
Pages Memorized: 204
Pages to go: 0
Dank, sei dir Gott!