Ike’s Carnegie Choir
The Eisenhower choir was invited to travel to New York to sing at Carnegie Hall. We performed in front of thousands of people with many other choirs from different states. Everyone worked together to practice our music for weeks in preparation for the grand performance everyone had worked so hard for.
We went to Carnegie Hall on the 4th day of our New York experience. We walked, went sightseeing, shopped, and had taken the subway all over New York by this day, so many of us felt ready to finally perform. Our purpose for this trip had finally come to a head, and there were mixed emotions of nervousness and excitement all around us. We started that morning early when we met up at 6 am, where we all gathered on the bus to go to the mass choir rehearsal to touch up on our songs and see how all the choirs sounded when finally combined. We ran through all the songs in rehearsal, and by 9 am, we were ready to head off to our next destination.
There were around 4 hours of free time before visiting Carnegie Hall for the first time, so we decided to spend it at the Hayden Planetarium. It was also the American Museum of Natural History, so there was a lot of material to explore and learn about. There were many exhibits of fossils, space, and sea life. There was also a large food court, so that's where we all decided to eat lunch before heading to Carnegie Hall.
This would be the first of two times we went to Carnegie Hall. It was around 1:45 pm when we arrived for our cue-to-cue practice, where we practiced our seating arrangements and figured out the path to the stage. There are around 3,000 seats in Carnegie Hall, and just that night, many of them would be full of people to watch us perform. So this is where this was happening, and it would pay off.
We quickly returned to our hotel to get ready for the big performance; we got into our uniforms and lunch, and before we knew it, we were heading back out the door to give our once-in-a-lifetime performance. We arrived and went to our seats to watch the other choirs sing before it was our turn. It was amazing to hear other choirs' beautiful songs. You could tell they worked so hard on them. Before we knew it, we began our descent down to the stage, where we sang the pieces we had learned over the months. Seeing all of the audience’s faces was exhilarating, and each of the choirs sang fantastically. As quickly as we came on, we were back to our chairs to listen to the rest of the performances as our purpose for this trip finally ended. If given a chance, I would go back in a heartbeat, and the Eisenhower choir has been so grateful for the opportunity of this wonderful experience!