Chattanooga, TN: March 9-12, 2016 - Moments (ACDA SoDiv)

Yet another choir trip.  That's the way my travel seems to be going these days.  I am not complaining in the slightest, mind you, just observing.

Regional ACDA conferences, as you'll no doubt remember from my previous ACDA entry, happen only on "off years," the years when National ACDA is not having their convention.  This was one such year.  SoDiv, by the way, stands for Southern Division, which is comprised of states in the southeastern U.S., including Kentucky.  The whole conference is very similar to the national one, just on a slightly smaller scale - fewer concerts, fewer days, smaller exhibition room, smaller turnout - as one might expect from drawing attendees from 1/7th the United States rather than all of it.

Cardinal Singers got selected to perform at one of the afternoon concerts, the one on Friday, so with excuse letters distributed and makeup work secured, we packed up vans and headed south Wednesday morning.  Chattanooga is only about 5 hours from Louisville, so it seemed silly to go to the trouble of flying to get there, not to mention a waste of money - and Dr. Hatteberg is not one to waste money if he can help it.

We actually went to Bowling Green, KY, first, but since I didn't take any pictures and the only thing we saw was a high school, I neglected to include it.  We sang a preview/demonstration concert for what I think was all the chorus classes combined.  They seemed to really enjoy it.  Saw several jaws drop at our sound.

Ate at Cracker Barrel then got back on the road.  Someone decided our van should be called the Nerd Herd.  Great.  Good idea guys.  I'm no nerd!

But anyway, we arrived in Chattanooga late afternoon, got our hotel rooms figured out, then set out for dinner.  A group of us went to Stir, just off to the side of the hotel complex.  This is what it looks like outside:

and in:

That second photo is the result of an Instagram filter.  Couple a' milestones in this entry.  First Instagram photo, first Snapchat screenshot.  I am officially a smartphone user.

We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, by the way, which is a multi-building hotel complex surrounding a central courtyard and array of parked trains - the titular Choo Choos.  Ours was building #3, which I thought had a pretty cool layout:

Could shout to other people from across the balconies.  Like an open air Embassy Suites.

After dinner was the first event of the conference, a tribute to Robert Shaw, famed choral director and arranger.  This year was the hundredth year since his birth.  So we sang some songs and watched part of a video.  There was some sort of conference reception after that, but many of us returned to the hotel and hung out there.

Woke up later than anticipated the next morning and scrambled to get to breakfast with some of the Nerd Herd.  We went to a little hole-in-the-wall donut place:

which was near the Tivoli theater, where much of the week's events were held.  The regional ACDA conference, at least, is structured as a group of rapid-fire concerts all in a row from the selected ensembles with a break in the middle for lunch each day.  The morning session runs 10-12, the afternoon 1:30-3:30.  Four groups, each with about 25 minutes of stage time, occupy the concert sessions.  Couldn't take any pictures/videos of the concerts themselves, but here's the theater from the outside and in:

By the way, Tivoli does not rhyme with cannoli.

A fellow Cardinal Singer asked me, as I took that last photo, "is this for your blog?"  She then proceeded to ask that same question every single time I took a photo for the rest of the trip because hey, jokes are better when they're repeated over and over and over and over and over and ov

Did the morning session, had lunch at a place called Bluegrass Cafe, then did the afternoon session.  The groups were an even mix of high school, college, and youth ensembles, as tends to be the case at most of these conferences.  They want variety, and I think they also want to give younger groups to have a chance to perform on a stage of this magnitude, rather than having it be dominated by all collegiate ensembles or older groups.  In general, the performances tended to have a lot of trimmings - props, dance moves, choreography, guest performers - which I guess is okay, but seems a little kitschy.  I guess the thought is that doing "just" a normal concert isn't enough oomph for this stage.

Had dinner on the roof of a brewhouse style restaurant:

Beautiful outdoor weather accompanied my food and beer sampler flight until about 7:15, when a tiny trickle turned into a torrential downpour within minutes.  The table I was sitting with - all of us dressed well since we were attending the conference - had no chance of walking back to the hotel without getting wet, so we just resigned ourselves to our fate and got home completely drenched.  I mean, I looked like I had showered in my suit.  Hung it up to dry and put on something else, happy to be warm and dry.

Got this photo of the concert that night from that same friend:

Yes thank you okay.

The night concerts were more headliners, groups that had been invited in rather than those who had applied and been accepted.  VOCES8 was on that night, singing a piece (among other things) by Ola Gjeilo, one of the big names of the choral world.

The next day was the big day for us - we had the last slot on the afternoon block of concerts, at around 3:00pm.  Had breakfast at the hotel - which costs extra, which is why we didn't eat there every morning - then saw the morning session, which included a high school group also from Louisville, the Youth Performing Arts School, or YPAS.  It was pretty cool that out of the 16 or so groups chosen, two of them were from Louisville.  Makes one pretty proud.

Also on the morning session was Wingate, where just by coincidence a brother of one of the Cardinal Singers goes, and which is less than an hour from my hometown of Charlotte.  They, also by coincidence, performed the only piece I'm aware of that was done by two groups, Holst's Nunc Dimittis.  The other group doing it?  Cardinal Singers of course.  AND they did Esenvalds's Only In Sleep, which was the first Esenvalds commission that Cardinal ever did (Soldier's Mother's Lullaby being the second).  So.  I was like.  You guys tryna FIGHT????

Anyway, we were taken backstage just before noon to be shuffled off to the "holding rooms", two dressing rooms in the downstairs hallway that were hotter than hell, then to the warm up room, which looked like a dance studio upstairs, then finally on stage for our sound check and rehearsal, then outside, then back inside to the holding rooms once again to change into our concert attire, then into the warmup room again, then back on stage, this time for the actual performance.  We did mostly the same concert as NCCO, with the Palestrina swapped out for a different movement from that same mass.  We did Soldier's Mother's Lullaby, and stunned the audience yet again with those magical notes.  I had one of those moments during that piece, while spinning around during the final section: a recognition of the indisputable fact that most of our time is wasted in life, and if there are just those few precious moments worth living for, this certainly had to be one of them.  I recognized just how rare it will be, percentage wise, to be doing something like this, and how much I should be fully and totally present whenever these moments arise.  So, yes, I sang my part, but mostly I was taking it all in.  I was trying my hardest to think of nothing else - not the next piece, not walking off stage, not what I was going to eat that night or who I'd be hanging out with later.  Just to be there, as hard as I possibly could.

It's hard to articulate my thoughts on this matter, to push through the bulwark of imprecise language and transfer the raw, indefinable emotional state in my mind to someone else.  I tried that night, at the hotel pool with some fellow Cardinals, but to them I am relatively sure it seemed like pseudo-profundity that drugs or taking one's travel blog way, way too seriously might cause someone to spew.  They just laughed, and after much trying, I laughed along with them.

I also, on the walk back from the pool, summoned the fire gods:

That's in that train courtyard I mentioned earlier.  Here's other pictures of it during the day:

Cool.

So, that was that for our performance, but we still had most of one day left in Chattanooga on Saturday.  First, a few of us went to the actual expo at the convention center, where many of the publishers were set up wheelin and dealin their sheet music to the conference goers:

I wasn't gonna buy anything but a guy said he'd make me a deal so...I bought a thing.  His tactic worked.

We then went to breakfast at Bluegrass Cafe.  I keep repeating restaurants on trips like this and I don't know why.  We had dinner at Stir a second night as well, and then there was Portland, when we went to Pizza Schmizza twice.  Even in freaking Amsterdam I ate at the same restaurant two nights in a row because we didn't have the time to look for anywhere else!  I feel like food is one of the biggest things to explore in new places and I am continuously selling myself short.  Why???

Anyway, we then went to the Aquarium as our day's activity.  Some people did this like train ride up a mountain that we were going to do earlier in the week, but I didn't hear about that until I saw the photo posted on our Cardinal Singers Facebook page, by which time I was already in the Aquarium anyway.

The Tennessee Aquarium is divided into two buildings, which they call "River Journey" and "Ocean Journey".  Two whole journeys for the price of one!

River Journey kinda looks like an open box of Chinese food to me.

There's no real story to be told; we just went through the Aquarium.  Image dump incoming:

I had an immensely good time.  Got some ice cream afterwards, sat by the river and ate:

Then went up to the pier overlooking the river:

Made our way back to the hotel and the vans. Got an idea for a setting of Down in the River to Pray along the way, but nevermind about that.  The Nerd Herd, with a few significant changes in personnel, set out around 4:30 for home in the ever-enstrengthening rain.  One van stayed behind because Dr. Hatteberg had to attend the post-conference reception for the ensemble directors, so that van was leaving Chattanooga around the time my van got in.  Had to take over driving the last leg since Susie was sick.  Not sure if I'm legally supposed to tell you that.  So...I guess keep it to yourselves.