I knew NCCO was coming up, of course, it being two years since the last one. I didn't realize, however, that there was a U of L group with plans to go down until about two weeks beforehand, when it was offhandedly mentioned in Cardinal rehearsal. I asked if I could be added on. They said yes.
We drove down Wednesday, November 1st, about a 12 hour drive, and had time only to check in to the hotel and have dinner before turning in for the night. The next morning, it was off to the conference bright and early to check in - and since we'd elected to stay at the cheaper hotel farther away, it meant having to drive in every morning and out every evening together as a group. Which was alright; I wanted to attend every part of it, so it was good to have another motivation to get going each morning.
Here's what the hotel pool looked like Wednesday morning:
And the breakfast area:
Antler chandelier! A Baton Rouge staple(??)
This conference, unlike ACDA, doesn't have an exhibition area, since there's only really one "track" for concerts and interest sessions, so it doesn't make much sense to have something else going on at the same time. Plus, it's a much smaller conference, so it likely wouldn't behoove many companies to set up booths anyway. All that to say, there was no real "central location" for this conference, so the sign up that morning was in the basement of the church where the first concerts would be held.
The church, First Presbyterian, worked well as a concert venue:
Nice, big, open stage, with more than enough seating for the conference attendees:
After the concerts - Georgia Southern and Missouri State Universities - a few of us went to grab some coffee, already feeling the effects of reduced sleep:
We then returned for a session led by Dr. Ann Howard Jones, formerly of Boston University, which was really kind of great - much more so than I expected, not really knowing who she was. Indeed, her talks, sessions, and/or masterclasses were some of my favorite parts of the weekend.
Then lunch at a Vietnamese place, then back to the church for a session on Irish choral music, then one on audience engagement, then a reading session of new choral works published under the NCCO series, then dinner time. The Louisville group had heard tell of a taphouse nearby that we were eager to try, but ended up in a dive-y kind of pub with an outdoor area and which, as we found out after ordering round 1 of drinks, didn't actually serve food. But the beer was a 2-for-1 special! So we stayed.
I mean, they had a beer tap fountain!
How could we say no??
Got ourselves back to the church one last time for the evening concerts given by BYU and U of Houston. Most people throughout the rest of the weekend agreed BYU had the best sound of any of the choirs there. Just so clean and present.
Finally got around to having food after the concerts at a real hole-in-the-wall pizza place, where we sat on the upper level:
This picture, taken on the way back to the van, gives a good feel for what most of Baton Rouge was like:
The next day, we made our way to the campus of LSU, which was the host campus of this year's convention. The first concert session was in the Methodist church nearby:
Webster and Trinity Universities performed. Then, it was off to the campus proper for a panel on Choral Ensembles in the Collegiate Curriculum:
After that was an all-conference free Jambalaya luncheon out on the lawn of the auditorium! This was a great chance to meet some of the other choral people who were there. Mostly, it seemed, there were conductors and members of the ensembles that were performing. What we did - bring a group of students down just to attend - seemed less common.
After that were three more sessions, one of which I skipped to go get some coffee, as I was on the verge of shutting down:
This also gave me an opportunity to briefly walk around the LSU campus, which is quite nice:
The architecture all has a kind of Spanish Mission look to it.
After the sessions, on the way to dinner at a place called Barcadia, I ran into John Hughes, the guy who runs the Choir Chat podcast that I was on back in May. Finally got to meet him in person! What a time.
Then that night, the headliner event, a performance of Considering Matthew Shepard by Craig Hella Johnson. This is a big, nearly circa 2-hour work for choir and small ensemble that sets the story of the murder of Matthew Shepard in a quasi-oratorio fashion, and let me tell you, it's a doozy. I didn't know much about the piece before sitting down at this performance, but there were parts of it where I couldn't move because of how it was affecting me. I highly recommend it, and if possible, see it live. The LSU choir, who was the choral ensemble for this performance, was outstanding as well.
After the concert we headed off to the conference party, and on the way I bumped into yet another familiar face, Melodie Galloway, commissioner of On Goes the River! Three blog posts she's made it into now! Spectacular!
The party was great, especially given that it was open bar and all the people from throughout the week were there. I only took one picture of it, and it came out spectacularly blurry, so much like Jack Dawson, it will live on only in my memory. But still! A good time was had by all.
The next morning we packed up the vans and checked out of the hotel and then headed into the last day of events. First: a new day, a new venue - the Catholic Church downtown:
We made a quick dash for some coffee just before, at yet another cool hip place in Baton Rouge:
Two concerts, one from Syracuse and one from U of Arkansas, then around the corner to the church's fellowship hall for the early afternoon's sessions, which began with a conducting masterclass led by Ann Howard Jones:
Then the second of that weekend's presentations by Mark Anthony Carpio, director of the Philippine Madrigal Singers, likely the most well known choral group from that part of the world. He did a demo session with the LSU chamber choir about rehearsal techniques and bringing a piece to life. I'm not sure if there was some purposeful decision surrounding this, but Filipino music was the de facto theme of the weekend.
We then headed off to a lunch place we'd wanted to go to earlier that week, but it took so freaking long that we ended up missing most of the next session, which was back at the Presbyterian church where it all began. Luckily I didn't miss Melodie's session!
And the reading session after that!
The U of L group had taken two vans down, and a few people wanted to get back early for church the following morning, so they left around 5:00, just before the final concert. I stayed, and got to hear concerts by Utah Valley University, who did Copland's In the Beginning; Texas Women's University, the only non-SATB choir to perform that whole conference; and Biola University, who rounded out the convention with a full program of Filipino music, no less (I told you!).
Those of us remaining had a nice dinner at an oyster place nearby, then set sail for home, a 12 hour drive that we began at around 9:00 PM. While Dr. Hatteberg had press-ganged me into helping with the driving on the way there, for the through-the-night journey, I elected to stay in the back and sleep.
