On Etsy Today

Thank-you to Rockology3 for featuring me in her Etsy treasury today:

In the Shop...

Designed a new header/banner, one that matches the blog's. It's much nicer looking, though.

I also have a couple of new prints from NY up. Check them out!

New York, New York

This past weekend, we sang at Carnegie Hall. (Remember the last entry? If you haven't read it, go on. I've explained the details there.)

The performance as a whole- the entire trip really- was a little surreal. How many people are fortunate enough to count this among one of their life experiences? To, though part of a large group, stand on one of the world's greatest stages?

Not everything progressed smoothly, however. During the performance, an audience member's phone went off. Not once, not twice, but at least five or six times. As we were singing onstage. Now that's blatantly disrespect of the highest degree. I have reason to believe a number of us were ready to bash heads.

As if that weren't enough, we:

-had two members of the chorus end up

in the hospital on the departure days (there and back)

-were delayed as a result, and did not make it to the CBS studio where we were scheduled to sing, nor could we make another performance stop days later

-were held at the US-Canada border for nearly an hour

-experienced multiple mechanical problems with the charter bus we were riding

It all made for a very interesting experience. Quite decidedly, I would acknowledge it to be one of the most valuable of my life, well worth all the time, expense, and energy.

Check out another (and rather better) take on this whole deal by a fellow blogger.

Look out for more NYC photos next week! All the over-publicized tourist-magnet locations, yes, but I returned with a good number of shots with which I was very pleased.

Amelie Soundtrack

Courtesy of friend Ian, here is a streaming playlist of the hauntingly beautiful Amelie soundtrack. Enjoy.

We're Goin' Places

Last spring, we, as in our choir, participated in our usual festivals. We, for lack of a better term, owned. The reprotoire that year consisted of the some of the most beautiful choral music I have ever had the fortune to perform. If you have never heard Sergei Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse Devo, look it up. It is much more impressive in person, certainly. Not to sound smug or anything, but I have felt that our performance, our interpretation, sounds far... well, superior to many others'. Never have we felt such deep emotional connection to our music. When we sang this piece in particular, some of the audience became moved to tears. We were moved to tears.

So in May we took a road trip down to the Heritage festival in Cleveland, which hosted not only choral but instrumental groups. And there we did more than well. There were not many other ensembles present at the time we were there, but we received the highest score. One of the judges, in fact, specified that he had never or only once given a higher score in his (approximately) fifty-year career. As a result, we have earned a spot in another gathering to be held this spring, when the nation's best high-school choirs convene under the direction of one Dr. Eph Ehly.

In Carnegie Hall.

There are no words to express how honored we all are. Most would have been awed to sit audience in that famed hall. We are to take part in a performance. Many who dream of getting to Carnegie deserve it, yet never reach the stage. We are no world-class symphony, no legendary musicians, but we are going to be there. We are going to stand on that stage, and we are going to sing.

Skywatch No. 12

I biked out to catch this sunset over a cornfield a couple of days ago. Cold, but nice. I ended up with a nice set of pictures... I might pull a few of them out for another Skywatch.