Moon River, wider than a mile

Yesterday I performed at the Andy Williams Christmas show here in NY.

It was a crazy day. We had to be there at 3:45. We got the rundown of the day from Devon the musical director.

First off, he's not a tall man. But a really nice nice professional guy. He expained that the concert hall was a union shop and union contract dictates that the stage be dark from 5-6PM. The food was for the union workers and not for the contingent workers ( us), unfortunately. Our dressing room was in the hallway with the comedienne and his back up kids.

We were performing in the round. Always interesting. THe stage is not that big so we were singing literally up the aisles. Sort of like a compass - N,S,E and W.

at 4:45PM, while the President and I are running around looking for the director to change the way we are singing ( we needed strength of section not strength in quartettes, Devon calls us for sound check.

We round up the troops find our places and quickly sound check with "words" ( Beethovens 9th) and "Do you hear what I hear". They are impressed ( or so they said).

Now we clock down to 9PM when we go on. We all talked and caught up, ate the food that we brought with us and shared the chips and protein bars that were provided in a box a long with a fruit basket.

It's time to go on, we line up and my lovely choir suddenly becomes a crew of chiefs and no Indians! My section almost got smacked upside the mouth. All of them! The time to be chief isn't seconds before performance time!!!!!!!!!!!

We aren't clear on are cues as there were no instructions to that end so we just watched to see what our director did.

We get in place and start counting down till it's out turn to sing. Since we have never actually rehearsed this, we are not entirely comfortable with the entrances. But Devon to the rescue. He may be stature challenged like I am BUT he is in white ( easy to see) and he held up is arms pointed at us and yelled go - we didn't hear him say it but we saw it and we were right in.

When the song was over Andy congratulated us by name and welcomed us and the audience to the show. Then they immediately started into a song that was not next in teh line up - uh oh. I had to laugh. There is only one piece that Hark the Herald is in and it was one we sing. The so - called professional in our group, otherwise known as the Diva, couldn't roll with the punches at all and didn't sing easily 50% of the performance. I figured it out and realized that the three kids who do vocal lbackup for him on the road had the same part we did - so I just followed them and the music while watching 2 directors one out of each eye. Literally - this is not a joke, this actually happened.

It made me realize that I work on the fly in this kind of environment really well. I forgot how well I can roll with the punches in performance and I don't embarass that easily.

We come to the end with O Holy Night and then Andy closes with his favorite and most favorite Christmas Carol of all....

"Moon River, Wider than a mile....."

It was an experience that I would do again in a minute, though there were times I swore I would die in that hallway backstage with the stale air.