Hey, Friends, Hey!!! I can not believe that the day has finally arrived…I am so incredibly excited about this evening. So what exactly am I so excited about??? Well, about a year ago I was asked to play for the Texas Tenors PBS broadcast special which will be airing tonight for the first time!!!! Yep, all the hard work and rehearsing, has finally come to an end and tonight all will be revealed!!! (hehe… I totally felt so dramatic saying that). So in preparation and excitement of watching it, I thought I would take you all along for the fun memories of that weekend in Galveston.

So how did it happen? How did I get selected to be a part of this incredible production?

Last summer as I was enjoying the sun, the pool and not being in school, I got a call from my friend Carla. Carla is the sister of one of the Texas Tenors, J.C. Fisher, and also a former band director in the Springfield area. She was asked to put together the orchestra for the PBS special, and was calling to ask if i would be a part of the orchestra. Ummm yes!! Of course! … I immediately told her yes! I was bursting at the seems to be a part of it… I was so excited and could not wait till September to take a trip to Galveston for the filming.

I have had a lot of wonderful opportunities while living in Springfield and have been able to perform with a lot of different orchestras, travel to Europe and perform, be the contract person for setting up orchestras for events and concerts, and continue to perform and be called to perform for special events around town. I have had the opportunity to perform with “The Transiberian Orchestra,” as well as, “Michael Buble,” and was completely blown away and ecstatic for those opportunities. But this is the first time I have ever been able to perform with a group and be featured on T. V. I love to perform and share my love of music with others… the energy you get from being in front of a large group of people, the adrenaline rush as your passion is ignited and you are able to share your gift with so many, but beyond that, is the feeling I get when I know that I am in the place God has for me. Yes, I have worked hard and I am a good violinist, but the opportunities that I have had are because of God opening the doors. He is the one that has opened all the doors for me. I never sought out the opportunities, but instead I continued to live my life pursuing excellence in my craft and working hard and God opened the doors. Read it again: GOD OPENED THE DOORS!

The week had finally come, it was the beginning of September and I was so ready to get on that bus and head to Galveston. The bus ride was really long, 12 hours to be exact, and we were pretty packed with all the orchestra members, instruments and the choir on board. There were a couple people that got seats to themselves, but almost everyone had to share. Not gonna lie, a 12 hour drive in a packed car or bus, with a lot of people is not always fun and sometimes can get kind of annoying. We stopped a couple times for restroom stops and of course, food! I can’t exactly remember where we stopped to eat for lunch the following day, but I ate catfish for the first time and totally enjoyed it! Yum! So good!

Anyway, after the long ride, we were finally in Galveston and I was so ready to look around and explore this beautiful city, but we were running behind, so instead we had to rush inside and get set up for the sound check. The special was being filmed in the incredibly beautiful Grand 1894 Opera House, rich in history and one of the last buildings that survived the storms during the 1900s. The Grand is one of the few remaining theaters of its era in Texas and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was such an honor to be able to perform on that stage!

Ok, so if you’ve never been a part of a huge presentation, concert, or performance, then you only really see the end result of a labor of love. But, for real, there is a lot that goes into a performance and especially a PBS broadcast, that even I had no idea about. We got into Galveston around 4pm and we didn’t leave the sound check until about 8 or 9pm. Seems like we got a lot accomplished, right?! Wrong! We only played through 4 or 5 songs in preparation for the performance the next day, and instead of rehearsing more (which is what I thought would be happening,) we ended up sitting and waiting and moving way more. The lights, the angels for the cameras, the backdrops, the staging for the tenors… I could go on and on… all of this was happening on that same day, the day before we were to perform!!!! But we’re professionals right?!! Sure, we can handle it! I knew that we were in for a LONG DAY of rehearsing, recording and performing the following day, since we didn’t even graze the agenda for the day. All in all, the experience was fun and the Texas Tenors were really nice, poised, talented and professional during sound check, occasionally coming over to chat with us, see how we were doing, and just goof around. They are all incredible musicians/ vocalists and they aren’t too hard on the eyes either. Well our day had come to a close in the opera house and it was finally time to explore the town.

Galveston downtown, here we come!!!

Since Galveston is such a tourist area, a lot of the restaurants and places were still open by the time we got out of sound check, which is pretty amazing to me, since i’m used to everything closing around 9 or 10 in Springfield. We walked around Galveston enjoying the beautiful weather, palm trees, and the gorgeous sunset over the boat docks, and we may have stopped for a photo op. 🙂 There were a lot of cool places to eat in the downtown Galveston area, so our groups ended up splitting up based on where they wanted to eat. Loving the outdoors so much, I wanted to eat at a place with a balcony or an outdoor eating area. We found a great little place to eat at and, when you’re so close to the ocean, you have to eat some sea food, It is a must! The only bad thing about sitting outside, near the ocean, during the summer, is the mosquitoes… so if you are planning a trip and you want to eat dinner outside like us, plan ahead and make sure you spray yourself down.

After our lovely evening in downtown Galveston, we got back on the bus to finally head to our hotels. Okay, so what i didn’t mention before, was that this was an all paid trip other than food, so the Texas Tenors were paying for us to travel to Galveston, perform, and for our hotel. Knowing this, I was anticipating a nice hotel for the evening and instead we arrived at a little motel outside of the city limits. This place was scary looking… it was really dark by the time we arrived and the lights outside flickered a ton as we walked to our rooms.. yep, it was right out of a horror movie. Okay, okay.. it wasn’t that bad! But it was a little sketch! The nice thing about it was that the orchestra and the choir members were pretty much the only people at this motel, so I felt a little better knowing that. The morning came really fast as we had to grab a quick breakfast and head to the Opera House. Once we arrived, we got on stage and did a little run through of a couple songs, for the sound engineer and lighting crew. We were then told to go upstairs and change into our wardrobe for the performance and then come downstairs for the actual run-through. The run-through went for a couple hours and then it was time for lunch. we would have about 1 1/2 hours to eat and get ready before the 2 performances.

Not knowing for sure if we would have enough time to get ready at the opera house, I made sure to do my hair and make up in the motel. So glad I did, because although we had a little more time than expected to get ready, before the performances and recordings, there were not enough mirrors for all the women trying to get ready.

The time had finally come and it was performance time! The opera house was filling up quickly with lots of audience members and I was getting more and more excited about performing all the amazing songs. While, I have seen a lot of PBS broadcasts and know that the audience is almost always featured at least a little bit, I never knew how much they were talked to before filming. Ok, so i’m going to let you in on a couple secrets! The audience members are moved around to make the room look like it is all the way full (it was pretty close to being full), which is also done in a lot music videos, and people are switched around based on what they are wearing and what will look better. ( I know, kind of cheesy) Then the producer comes out and talks with the audience and informs them that they will be active participants in the filming… they will clap, smile, laugh.. they have to look like they are enjoying themselves. Well, duh! But i can tell you… The Texas Tenors did not disappoint… everyone loved them! The other really strange thing about filming vs real live concerts, is that you can re-do certain songs and things if they need re-done. When you’re performing a live concert and mistakes happen, o well, they happened and you can’t go back and fix it. We ended up re-doing a couple pieces at the end of each filming and now I can not wait to see the entire thing put together!

 

(Carla and Me)

Along with us traveling to Galveston and performing for the broadcast, the Texas Tenors came and performed in Springfield on May 13th at the Gilloz Theatre. This was a benefit concert for the Springfield Youth Symphony and it was a great end to the performing cycle!

In case you’d be interested in watching, here is the line up for the PBS stations. Till next time!!!