The Night Before

So tomorrow night about this time, we'll be getting everyone situated on stage for our first night of "Joseph Smith the Prophet" at the Tabernacle. I'm pretty excited. Though the week didn't start that way.

First of all, one thing I've learned over the years is that, starting about 10 days before any given performance, you begin getting cancellations from your performers. Some have legit emergencies that come up, others mistakenly double-booked, but most just don't have any sense of commitment or what they put you through when they cancel so late in the game. So, as usual, I had about 6-7% of the group cancel on me in the last couple weeks leading up to now. And with a group over 300 in number, that's a lot of people. The really unfortunate thing is that they always tend to congregate in one section of the orchestra or choir. This time it was tenors and violins. So I emailed about 8 more violins, all of which could not do it.

MORAL: Don't cancel on people. Period. Once you make a commitment, keep it. If you absolutely HAVE TO break it, find a replacement solution before you contact them. Let them decide whether they'll take it or not. It's the considerate, honest and professional thing to do.

Then last Saturday I woke up with the worst flu of my life. Now granted, I don't get sick often, so some of you may have scoffed at my pain, but I was out for the count. I couldn't spend more than a half hour or so at a time out of bed it seemed. By Monday, I was still really sick and my flight left that night. I tried to reschedule, but they wanted $1 million to switch, so I decided to infect their entire crew and every passenger with my disease. I started to wonder whether I should get a replacement conductor, just in case. It was that bad.

But Tuesday morning came and, I believe miraculously, I was at just about 100%. Just in time for our only choir rehearsal in the Tabernacle. The rehearsal went flawlessly. Everyone was ready to go, totally prepared, we had an awesome accompanist and an extremely kind and helpful Tabernacle staff, I got to wear what I call a "Madonna" mic (Britney wears one too, but she's insane and so does Garth, but he's country), so that was pretty cool.

What's wonderful about such a great rehearsal, is it totally puts me at ease until the performance. Which is tomorrow. And if it goes anything like our rehearsal on Tuesday, it just well could be the most spectacular performance I've ever been involved with yet. Maybe I'll let you know.

The 2nd Semi-annual Blog Post

OK, so as all of the wonderful comments have pointed out, perhaps I haven't kept up on this like I should. It's not for lack of news, just laziness. Good ole fashioned laziness.

Two weeks ago, we did two nights of "The Price of Freedom" in concert at Mountian View High School in Mesa. The last time we'd done that one was over 3 years ago and it was well overdue. Everything turned out really great. The cast was fantastic and the audience was blown away. It's hard as a conductor for these concerts, because if the audience loves it, they're really quiet. So you start to wonder, "Are they bored? Asleep? Have they left the building?" But when we finished on Friday night, by the time I turned around to take a bow to the "sleeping crowd," they were on their feet and they brought us out for a second bow. Saturday was the same. As usual, I wish we could have had at least 2 more nights.

So now, I've been talking to McKane Davis (my close friend and fellow 259-er) who wrote the show with me, and we're working toward refining the show to be filmed for broadcast on PBS and public television in general. In June BYU-TV will begin airing our Abravanel "Joseph Smith the Prophet" performance, and depending on the reaction to that, I think "The Price of Freedom" would be an obvious follow-up.

In two weeks, we'll be performing "Joseph Smith the Prophet" at the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. We'll have an enormous choir of almost 300 voices, a full orchestra (if I can somehow track down the elusive oboe position) and some of my favorite soloists, as well as some first-timers and it should be an amazing experience. I mean, it's the Tabernacle. And it's already sold out, which just makes it that much more exciting. If you're reading this, you'll be in town and don't have tickets, not to fret, the Temple Square people usually let in a lot of standby people, so I would try your luck for sure.

So there you go. The latest news. If things continue like they have, I should be posting again sometime in 2009. Till then...

The First Entry

So here I go. The purpose of this blog is basically two-fold, I guess. First, to let anybody who cares know what projects, concerts, recordings, etc. I'm up to. The second, is for myself because I've never been good at keeping a journal and, hopefully, this will at least keep track of what I've done, at least publicly. So there you go. Let me know what you think. Whoever you may be.