The rest of the trip
Okay, so I failed in my responsibilities as tour blogger for the back half of the tour. After we got to Seattle, I had trouble uploading pics using the hotel WiFi, so I thought I'd wait till I got home (which was Monday night, quite late) to finish up. But I fell asleep. Fortunately, I have a little time now, since my car got a flat tire on the way to UVa and I'm waiting at a McDonald's in Warrenton for a tow truck. Their WiFi seems to work okay. But I'm sure you've heard lots of tour stories from your singers already.
So we drove to Seattle from Portland on Wednesday. We stopped in downtown Portland to have lunch at one of their famous food truck encampments, so the guys ate lots of interesting things. We arrived at our hotel in Seattle, dropped off our luggage, and then headed to a Beethoven's Ninth rehearsal with the Northwest Symphony and the other four choirs participating in the concert.
The guys were just glad to be off the bus and able to have a stable cell phone signal. Gotta take care of the important stuff, right?
A view of the assembled masses...
On Thursday, we headed down to Tacoma to do a rehearsal exchange with the men's chorus at Pacific Lutheran University. We learned about each choir, sang something together for fun, and then sang some songs separately for each other.
Thursday night we traveled to West Seattle for a rehearsal in one of the concert venues for the Beethoven.
It was a really tight squeeze!
We had most of the daytime off on Friday, so guys went into Seattle on the light rail from the station near our hotel. You'll have to ask them for photos. I caught the cold that came on tour with us, so I just stayed in bed until it was time to head to Seattle for our Friday night concert with Illumni Men's Chorale and three other choruses.
Here we are rehearsing with Illumni on our two joint pieces.
There were also two barbershop choruses and a Norwegian Fisherman's Chorus. Don't ask.
But the real highlight of the evening for the guys was the special guest appearance by voice actress Ellen McLain. She's a friend of Otter's aunt, and she voiced a prominent character (GLaDOS) in a popular video game (Portal). Coincidentally, Mildew had written an arrangement of the character's famous song that our a cappella subset was performing. So after a lot of behind-the-scenes work, Ellen sang the song in the concert with our guys! For most of them, it was the most exciting part of tour.
After the concert, Mildew had purchased a replica of the cake that appears in the video game, so everyone got a piece before we headed back to the hotel.
Saturday was another mostly free daytime, so some of the guys went back to downtown Seattle for more adventures. We left during rush hour to get to our first Beethoven Ninth performance.
The sales manager at our hotel asked if we could take some pics on the property, so since we were wearing our tuxes already, we did it before heading out.
Before the Beethoven, each of the participating choirs got to sing one solo number. We sang Shenandoah. But before that, the brass from the orchestra played a piece to start the concert. Imagine our surprise when we found out it was the Biebl Ave Maria! It was extra special to hear one of our signature pieces played by pro brass players.
The performance went pretty well, though four of the guys were a little confused about where they were supposed to be when. Two of them missed our Shenandoah performance. I was upset. They went to get food.
Everyone was pretty tired on Sunday, but we gathered at noon to check out of the hotel and make our way to the concert venue in Bellevue. Interestingly, this was the latest departure on the whole trip. The guys were pretty good about being where they needed to be relatively on time. But this time we left about a half hour late. No harm done. The venue, Bellevue Presbyterian Church, is huge, so there was enough room for everyone to sit in the hall for the first three movements of the Beethoven. On Saturday, we had to walk in after the 3rd movement, which took about 15 minutes and really slowed the momentum. This was much better!
After the performance, the guys headed for SeaTac and flew home on the red-eye. They landed at Dulles at around 7 a.m. and were back on Grounds in time for most of their classes. But as I write this, at break time during our Tuesday night rehearsal, everyone is still looking pretty worn out. But they're young and resilient, so I'm sure they'll be back to normal pretty quickly!
So we drove to Seattle from Portland on Wednesday. We stopped in downtown Portland to have lunch at one of their famous food truck encampments, so the guys ate lots of interesting things. We arrived at our hotel in Seattle, dropped off our luggage, and then headed to a Beethoven's Ninth rehearsal with the Northwest Symphony and the other four choirs participating in the concert.
The guys were just glad to be off the bus and able to have a stable cell phone signal. Gotta take care of the important stuff, right?
A view of the assembled masses...
On Thursday, we headed down to Tacoma to do a rehearsal exchange with the men's chorus at Pacific Lutheran University. We learned about each choir, sang something together for fun, and then sang some songs separately for each other.
Thursday night we traveled to West Seattle for a rehearsal in one of the concert venues for the Beethoven.
It was a really tight squeeze!
We had most of the daytime off on Friday, so guys went into Seattle on the light rail from the station near our hotel. You'll have to ask them for photos. I caught the cold that came on tour with us, so I just stayed in bed until it was time to head to Seattle for our Friday night concert with Illumni Men's Chorale and three other choruses.
Here we are rehearsing with Illumni on our two joint pieces.
There were also two barbershop choruses and a Norwegian Fisherman's Chorus. Don't ask.
But the real highlight of the evening for the guys was the special guest appearance by voice actress Ellen McLain. She's a friend of Otter's aunt, and she voiced a prominent character (GLaDOS) in a popular video game (Portal). Coincidentally, Mildew had written an arrangement of the character's famous song that our a cappella subset was performing. So after a lot of behind-the-scenes work, Ellen sang the song in the concert with our guys! For most of them, it was the most exciting part of tour.
After the concert, Mildew had purchased a replica of the cake that appears in the video game, so everyone got a piece before we headed back to the hotel.
Saturday was another mostly free daytime, so some of the guys went back to downtown Seattle for more adventures. We left during rush hour to get to our first Beethoven Ninth performance.
The sales manager at our hotel asked if we could take some pics on the property, so since we were wearing our tuxes already, we did it before heading out.
Before the Beethoven, each of the participating choirs got to sing one solo number. We sang Shenandoah. But before that, the brass from the orchestra played a piece to start the concert. Imagine our surprise when we found out it was the Biebl Ave Maria! It was extra special to hear one of our signature pieces played by pro brass players.
The performance went pretty well, though four of the guys were a little confused about where they were supposed to be when. Two of them missed our Shenandoah performance. I was upset. They went to get food.
Everyone was pretty tired on Sunday, but we gathered at noon to check out of the hotel and make our way to the concert venue in Bellevue. Interestingly, this was the latest departure on the whole trip. The guys were pretty good about being where they needed to be relatively on time. But this time we left about a half hour late. No harm done. The venue, Bellevue Presbyterian Church, is huge, so there was enough room for everyone to sit in the hall for the first three movements of the Beethoven. On Saturday, we had to walk in after the 3rd movement, which took about 15 minutes and really slowed the momentum. This was much better!
After the performance, the guys headed for SeaTac and flew home on the red-eye. They landed at Dulles at around 7 a.m. and were back on Grounds in time for most of their classes. But as I write this, at break time during our Tuesday night rehearsal, everyone is still looking pretty worn out. But they're young and resilient, so I'm sure they'll be back to normal pretty quickly!
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