Voices of Angels

Saw the American Boy Choir "Voices of Angels" concert this past weekend, with special guest Nathan Gunn. The venue was a beautiful old chapel with super high vaulted ceilings. The sound bounced around in there like it was built for music. Maybe it was, I don’t know much about architecture. And the choir. They are, as their name suggests, boys. Boys with beautiful, beautiful soprano voices. A few of the older boys had deeper voices. It all blended so beautifully. Some of the boys were so little! They all wore long white robes with a red collar and a white ruffled neck.

It wasn’t exactly a church service, but there were readings between the songs, and some of the readings were religious. It was very, very moving. It was also really nice to see NG perform again. I was sitting in about the 10th row. Here’s the view from my seat, taken before the performance began:

Zoomed in:

The chorus started out in the back of the chapel and came forward singing. They eventually stood in the middle of the stage. Nathan stood by the music stand in between the poinsettias. The people doing the between-song readings stood behind that eagle statue. So I didn’t realize it when I sat down, but I was basically directly in front of him. I doubt that he saw me there. Well, maybe. At the end we all sang O Come All Ye Faithful together. I didn’t use my full-on operatic soprano, but I was loud and clear… No, not in a socially unacceptable way. There was a super loud organ playing and the entire room was singing, over 1000 people. He looked around at the people singing and I think he heard/saw me and gave a little hello-ish smile/nod. Like, tiny. Maybe. But probably not. I’m not delusional. Not about that, at least… And besides, he probably wouldn’t recognize me anyway. So like I said, I doubt that he saw me there.

The only weird thing to report was that, exactly at the end of each song, someone in the audience made a weird sound. Like a honk. I know it sounds crazy but I’m not making this up! Each time we’d all look over in that direction with a “What was that?” look on our faces. It didn’t take away from the beauty of the performance.

There was another, slightly longer performance the next day, but I was out seeing The Hobbit. So I’m sad to say, I didn’t get to see Nathan Gunn sing the Grinch song. But hey… I sang with him the night before. Me and a thousand other people, but still… Can I put that on my resume?

The Double-Take $10 Karma

So remember in my last post how I said I check Nathan Gunn's website occasionally to see if he'll be singing nearby? Apparently checking his page isn’t always the best way to find out where he’ll be singing. For example, let’s say he’s singing some holiday concerts about, oh, TEN MINUTES FROM YOUR HOUSE. Something like that might not appear on his schedule. However, it does appear on the bulletin board in the kitchen where I work. So there I was, drying off my lunch container when I saw this poster.

 

My first thought was, “Hey, that guy looks like Nathan Gunn.” And then, “Oh…wait a sec!” It was a very Bugs Bunny double-take moment.

One of my colleagues has a son who attends American Boy Choir School. She’s the one who put the poster up. She told me she can get tickets for $10, but they’re up the balcony. I thought, hmmm. I’m seeing Nathan from “up in the balcony” at the Met next month. For $150. I think can splurge and get the $40 ticket. After adding all the fees and so on the online ticket price would have been about $50. But I couldn’t tell where the seats were, so I called the box office. Talked with the ticket person about how if I knew a student I could get way cheaper tickets (like, $15 I think). She said if I hadn’t told her that she could have sold me student tickets. I was like, I couldn’t lie about that! She was so impressed by that (kept talking about karma!) that she waived all the fees –so the $40 ticket ACTUALLY COST ME $40! I guess there’s your karma.

The concert is in a chapel and it’s general admission. I plan on sitting squarely in the middle. The Husband would have accompanied me but alas our babysitter isn't free that evening, so I’ll be going solo.