Family, Fantasy, holidays, Media, Music, Travel, Uncategorized

Strange Performance Opportunities

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In November, Husband and I and four other members of our handbell choir are going to New York City to play in a massed handbell choir of 300 ringers at Carnegie Hall.  We have been invited to play a separate concert in Central Park, and last week, the silliest ringing opportunity thus far came from the Carnegie staff, who have arranged for us to play at Radio City Music Hall with the Rockettes.  We can sign up to perform in  one of three shows on November 29 and 30.

I just don’t know if I am up for the Rockettes. We don’t have to dress like the Rockettes, which is a blessing.  Husband  would look pretty silly in tights and high heels!  This trip is getting stranger and stranger!

If you could perform anywhere doing anything, where would it be and with whom?  

44 thoughts on “Strange Performance Opportunities”

  1. Rise and Strut your stuff Baboons!

    I think the second question is “Why would an audience want to see bell ringers and Rockettes performing together?” My thought is that this is not a combination that naturally comes together in my mind. Bell ringers. Rockettes. HMMM. I get your reluctance.

    I am not a great performer. Put me in front of students and I can teach like crazy. Perform in front of an audience—not so much. Not even in my music days of yore, unless it was in a group or band. So not many performances appeal to me as performer.

    Renee, we stayed just down the block from the Radio City Music Hall, walking by it at least twice a day during our trip.

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  2. I think where ever most Baboons perform today, it must be air conditioned. Whew! Keep cool today, Baboons. I think I would like to perform with a wind ensemble or, if I could play a string instrument, with a string quartet .

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  4. Handel’s and Ro kettles sounds like a YouTube video just waiting to go viral.

    I haven’t even thought about performing in a long time. Did get to sign the Hallelujah Chorus in Northfield this Easter. That was great fun.

    At the height of my techie days, I had a recurring nightmare that I suddenly had to go on in a show I had been dressing. Of course I knew all the lines, but being backstage had no clue of th blocking, and the cast was furious with my ineptitude.

    That may have cured me of asperations to stardom.

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    1. “Handbells and Rockettes”

      Sheesh, autocorrect, I appreciate the effort in changing handbells to Handel’s (persistently, just tried to do it again), but back off already.

      And no, I didn’t mean “handball” either.

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  5. If I can truly live in a fantasy world where I can do anything with anyone, I would tap dance with Gregory Hines. This would, of course, require that i have more than rudimentary tap dance skills and that Gregory Hines would not be dead…but a girl can dream. 🙂

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    2. There are plenty of introvert performers who do very well while on stage. It’s when required to interact with the audience afterward that they have a problem. Meg Hutchinson, come to mind.

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  7. When I was in college, the Fargo Moorhead Symphony would sometimes recruit Concordia musicians to perform on pieces that required extra personnel. I was recruited to play bass clarinet on Ravel’s Bolero. The music was rented, (I never realized that many orchestras rented their scores) and in a certain place in my part were written the words “nudge Walt”. I asked my clarinet prof about it, and he said he thought Walt was a bassoonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the bass clarinetist was simply reminding himself to alert Walt to get ready to play after all the interminable measures of rests in that piece. I thought that was pretty cool, to have music played by such a great orchestra.

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  8. I don’t feel the need to perform anywhere either, but if I could get backstage and play with the lighting (since we’re in fantasy) It would be Queen tours in the 80’s and Genesis in 86. 🙂
    Or Pink Floyd.

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    1. Not to ignore my theater background, if I could hang out with Jean Rosenthal or Tharon Musser… (famous lighting women) well, I’d just try not to get in the way or say something stupid.

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      1. I know those names 🙂

        Not sure who i’d like to work with in the costume world. I will say working for great designers is a good education, even if it is often brutal.

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  9. I managed to become part of our Unitarians’ “band” by inviting myself to sing harmony and play rhythm (think tambourine, etc.) when one of their members retired.

    There is a cool Irish band here in WInona area called Patina – fiddle, guitar, upright bass, accordian, panpipe, drums shared among four people. I wish they would invite me to sing harmony with them, not that they really need it. (But not till November.)

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  10. I’m not much on performing either. In high school and college I did a little bit of theater but never tried out for a major role, just smaller roles. And I was comfortable in the choir because I was part of a bigger group. I never tried out for any solos, not that I have a singing voice that would warrant that. So I think we’ll have to go the fantasy route which means that I would very much like to go back in time and sing Ave Maria in a little bar in Minneapolis with Cantus and Chanticleer.
    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=cantus+and+chanticleer+walk+into+a+bar&view=detail&mid=A192F32DE4E3A141B3EBA192F32DE4E3A141B3EB&FORM=VIRE

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  11. A modest bucket list item: I’d love to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall. I think I could give Osmo’s recent version (the best I’ve ever heard!) a run for its money. 😉 *yeah, right!*

    Of course, that would require winning the lottery so I’d have enough free cash to pay the exorbitant bribe needed to convince the orchestra, Osmo, and the management that an old, broken-down, has-been, high-school band director from the 1980s could do justice to the piece.

    But it would be free and open to the public, and to sweeten the deal, I’d suggest patrons make a free-will offering to a predetermined charity.

    Chris in O-town

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    1. I’m with you. I’d love to conduct a Beethoven symphony with the MN Orchestra. If you take the 5th (no pun intended), I will take the 9th. They do a “fantasy camp” for amateur musicians. I wish they would do something similar for conducting. I’d love a few lessons from Sarah Hicks. 🙂

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      2. I attended the Symphony Ball many years ago, and one of the silent auction items was an opportunity to conduct the orchestra at a concert during Summerfest. Don’t recall how much it went for. Precious few items were within my budget, but there some really nice ones.

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      1. Listen to a recording, and focus on the repetitive rhythmic pattern that goes from the beginning to the end ( One, two and a three, four and and a five and a six and a) and imagine having to play it over and over and over.

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  14. I’ve always kind of wanted to dance to Warren Zevon’s The Worrier King. I don’t know how exactly you would approach it as a dancer, but the swooping slide guitar suggests movement to me, and I think a good choreographer could make something compelling out of it. If I had any idea how to do it, and I were thirty years younger, that would be my performance.

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