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.

Portland, OR: November 11-14, 2015 - A Soldier's Mother's Lullaby (NCCO)

Well, I certainly took my sweet time getting this post written.  First time anyone's said to me they were looking forward to a blog post and I take like a month to get it posted.  I barely remember the sequence of events.  Luckily, I take photos.  That's the secret to my success.  I just look at the pictures and figure it out.  Anyway.  Onward!

The National Collegiate Choral Organization, or NCCO, is relatively new on the scene of choir conferences, having had its inaugural event in 2005 and only occurring every other year since.  Unlike ACDA back in February, I was at this event not as an attendant but as a participant - the Cardinal Singers were selected to be among the half dozen or so groups that performed throughout the long weekend we were there.

I believe Portland was chosen, at least in part, because Ethan Sperry, director at Portland State, was one of the founding members of NCCO.  He, incidentally, had visited Louisville about a month or two beforehand, and also, incidentally, had commissioned a piece several years ago that Cardinal was, at the time, performing on our next concert, so he was quite happy to step in and conduct us during rehearsal just for funsies.

Also, I got to miss some school for this, so that's fun.  Of course, almost all of my classes are directly involved in choir, so there was only like, one that I had to explain to the professor.  Anyway, we left Wednesday morning in three groups: the llamas, the goats, and the sheep.  These names were chosen, I think, as a one-time joke; nevertheless they stuck.  The three groups were just the three different flights into Portland.  That's it.

The goats - that included me - were first to arrive and had to manage getting to the hotel all by our widdle selves.  Just to make things exciting, one of our members decided to forget his wallet on the plane, and a contingent had to be left behind to reclaim it.  Story is that the wallet was found with four minutes to spare.  Any later and it would have been in Los Angeles.  Well done there.

This is a thing in the airport:

We got from airport to hotel by way of train.  The train ride was actually pretty cool.  Got to see a few nice views, including this, crossing the river:

Made it to the hotel without incident.  As we were checking in, I noticed a familiar face over at the other end of the counter.  I turned to someone else in our group and mutter-whispered to them: "that's Dominick DiOrio."  Very exciting to almost no one reading this, probably, but at the time we were rehearsing one of his pieces for New Music Festival, so most of our group knew his name.  We said hello as he walked by, and he asked if we were the choir from Louisville.  We said yes.  I asked if he was coming to New Music Festival to hear us sing his piece - not unreasonable, since he's at Indiana - but he said no.  He had some conference in Hawaii.  Psh.

Got word from the sheep that they'd be in late enough that we should go ahead and have dinner.  First, we decided to try to find the church we'd be performing at the next day to see if we could rehearse in it that night.  Unfortunately, there was a Black Lives Matter conference being held there.  Y'know, that last sentence out of context makes me sound like a pretty terrible person.

Anywho, some shots from our walk round town:

Ate at a place called Pizza Schmizza.  Also had some beer at a place called Pizza Schmizza.  It was a good place.

The sheep arrived and got dinner too, and all of us convened in a ballroom at the hotel to rehearse.  Well, everyone except the llamas.  Their plane got way delayed.  They ended up getting to the hotel at about 3:00AM.  But anyway.

You may remember that name Ēriks Ešenvalds from the ACDA entry.  He's one of the most commissioned and performed choral composers today and we, lucky group that we are, got to premiere a piece of his at this conference called A Soldier's Mother's Lullaby.  There still isn't an excellent recording of it that I know about, but as soon as there is, it will be inserted here.  It's rull good son.  It'll change ya life.

While going through our music and discussing the day to come, Dr. Hatteberg pulled out his phone to check for a text from Ēriks, who we were hoping to meet up with so he could hear how we were doing on his piece.  Unfortunately it didn't look like that evening was going to work, but Hatteberg kept checking his phone anyway.  As he was discussing details for our performance and gesticulating with the phone in his hand, Dylon interrupted him and asked, "Dr. Hatteberg...are you calling somebody?"

He stopped mid-sentence and looked at his phone.  "...I guess I'm calling Latvia."

He talked to Ešenvalds briefly about rehearsing the next day.  He held it together for the call, but started cracking up as soon as he hung up.  "I just butt-dialed one of the top choral composers in the world."

The next morning, we went to the opening ceremony and first performances at the church we'd been unable to get into the night before.  It was pretty neat aesthetically, but not the best space for performing.  Not enough reverb.

After the morning session was a lunch break.  Hatteberg was certain Ešenvalds was in the church somewhere, so we set out to find him.  At last, I spotted him over by the door and walked over.  "Kent Hatteberg is looking for you," I said, forgetting to even introduce myself.  He gave me a puzzled look.  "I just talked to him."

Oh...well.  Don't I feel dumb.  So I complimented his piece and went on my way.

For lunch, we partook of the local delicacy: food trucks.

It legitimately is one of the things Portland is known for.  A whole city block surrounded with these shacks and trailers, most serving one or another variety of Asian food, for some reason.  I found what I think might have been the only pizza truck and got some barbecue chicken thing.  It was only then that I realized I'd had pizza the night before.  Ah well.  We ate in this little square:

After lunch, we returned to the church to at last have our rehearsal with Ešenvalds.  He seemed to like it.  He even took a picture with us holding his hand in a way that suggests approval of the University of Louisville: 

We pretty much had the rest of the day free until the evening's concert.  I and several others wanted to see the city, so we set out to do so.  First stop: Voodoo Doughnuts.  One of those things I'd been told I had to try.  This was one of the two I got:

The other one didn't last long enough to be photographed.

Walking through the rain, we then trekked to Powell's Books, one of the most famous bookstores in the country.  Maybe the most famous.  Maybe in the world.  I don't have stats to back that up though.

With time to get back, change, and get to the church again, that was about it for our sightseeing.  The concert that night was really incredible.  This was my first time performing at a conference with the Cardinal Singers, and it's an experience that'll stay with me for quite some time.  Especially the Ešenvalds piece.  My goodness.  I can usually get through performances no problem, but I had trouble holding it together during the duet portion at the end.  Again...I'm champing at the bit for that recording.

We waited for our turn to go under the church in the basement, which is where this infamous picture comes from:

And here's one from our actual performance:

One of the nice things about going on trips in large groups is that there are so many people to steal pictures from when you get home.

Anyway, after the concert it was time to celebrate.  Somehow we ended up right back at Pizza Schmizza.  I hear it was dollar beer night somewhere else, but I paid full price.  I also paid the price the next morning, but that's a different story.

With the concert done, we had the rest of the trip to just enjoy the conference.  Well, sort of.  Friday morning we went to a session that was supposed to be a conversation with Simon Carrington and John Eliot Gardiner, which is a big deal, but we ended up in the overflow room, so we just watched half of a Skype conversation with Simon Carrington and John Eliot Gardiner.  Not as cool.  Then, since we were going to immediately have our New Music Festival Concert upon returning to Louisville, we spent the next 90 minutes or so rehearsing the pieces for that.  Fun!  But, hey, that's the trade-off.  And we needed it.

After that, we were free to go about our day once more, but for the most part we just wanted to eat and sleep.  That night was another concert, one that we were set to participate in as a quasi-flash mob.  Ethan Sperry, mentioned above, was one of the conductors for the concert, and wanted us to sing with his group on that Ešenvalds piece he had conducted when he visited Louisville, so the plan was to just walk up when that piece came up on the program and join on in.  When we did this, the guy next to me said, "we just got this today."

"Oh," I said, "we have it memorized."  Whoops.

But it went just fine.  Simon Carrington's group then went as well.  Also, this concert was at a different venue, one much more reverberant and...well...church-looking.

There was a contingent interested in more revelry that night but I just couldn't.  We had to wake up at 3am to make our flight, and I needed to still be in good voice two days later for that next concert.  To sleep I went.

The next morning - early, early morning - we got a bus instead of taking the train since, y'know, they aren't running at 4:00.  We had a long day of flying ahead of us, then within 24 hours of returning to Louisville, another concert.  The choir train, unlike the Portland train, she never stops running.

As the plane leapt into the sky, the first of the morning sun blazed into view over the horizon: