The first week back at school in 1980 following the Christmas break was a short one for me and a few other students. We were going to take part in the All-State music concerts in Popejoy Hall on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque. All-State was comprised of high school students from across the state in various choirs, bands and orchestras. From our school, we had seven people from choir and three people from band. Out of the ten of us, only one had been to All-State before.
In the weeks prior to All-State, including over Christmas break, we in the choir had to rehearse and memorize the pieces of music we were going to perform. We had to do this under the threat of being sent home from Albuquerque. And the music teachers weren't even going to drive us back. They were just throw us under, uh, on the Greyhound bus.
We left Wednesday after school in the school's two vans. As usual, it took more than four hours to get to Albuquerque. (I've always said that no matter where you live in the State of New Mexico, it's a four-hour drive to Albuquerque. It seems like anytime I moved further north in the state, it still took four hours to get there.) I got stuck in the van with the teachers. It was not as fun a road trip as it could have been, but it was still exciting to get out of school for a few days.
We got to the hotel. As I mentioned, there were 10 of us students. Five were boys and five were girls. The cheap school district would not spring for four rooms for all the students, so we all had to stay in two rooms, with two double beds and a fold out each. Guess who had to sleep on the fold out in the boys' room.
We got up the next morning and ate breakfast at the hotel's restaurant. It was all on the school's tab. We could make up for them not getting us extra space. We ordered extra orange juice. Yeah, that'll show them.
We loaded up on the vans and went to UNM. The first thing we had to do was be evaluated on our knowledge of the material before being admitted. Again, we were warned that we would be sent home if we didn't pass. While we were waiting for our "auditions," I saw one girl come out in absolute tears. I got the idea they told her to go home. We had to go into a room with an adjudicator to sing a few segments of the pieces without looking at the sheet music. The pieces we were to perform were a combination of traditional classical music with some obscure and avant-garde material. I was fine on the traditional, but the other material we had a hard time learning because we weren't sure how they were supposed to sound. My adjudicator had me do all the avant-garde pieces. I did my best. When I was done, he said, "You just barely made it!" Everyone else in our group also got to stay.
From the original audition, there were supposed to be 320 students in the All-State choir. That would make 40 for each section. I found out later that 44 people had auditioned for the Bass II section, the one I was in. This meant that there were only four Bass II's who did not make the cut. No wonder I made it. (The next year, they cut the number of people in each part to 35. I did not make All-State my junior year.)
We all filed into this auditorium in the university's music building. We were given assigned seats and sat with our sections. This was the same building that housed Popejoy Hall. Above the stage was this massive pipe organ. After a short wait, our conductor appeared. He was the choir director from the University of Southern California. (Yes, I remember his name. I'm avoiding all real names in this blog, but I'm pretty certain you can look up the name of USC's choir director in 1980 on the Internet.) He was a very boisterous conductor who could always make us laugh.
He had us get out our sheet music for the first piece, which basically consisted of the lyric "allelujah" over and over. We started singing it LOUD! I was astonished at how it sounded with more than 300 people singing it together. The conductor acted like he was being pushed back by the volume, had us stop, and told us the correct level to sing the piece at. We started over.
We then ran through each piece in the order they would be performed. I was astonished at the sound coming from this choir and was enthalled to know that I was a part of it. We got to the avant-garde pieces. They made more sense once I could hear all the parts.
Then the conductor did something odd. He had us change our seats, so that we alternated Soprano, Tenor, Alto, Bass. The girl on my right appeared to be a senior and would not talk to me. She had short dark blonde hair and wasn't very attractive. Thankfully, the girl on my right had a bubbly personality and was easy to get along with. She was also a sophomore, had short, dark brown hair and was very cute. However, at this point, I wasn't looking to get together with someone with whom I would wind up a pen pal. I don't remember her name.
We rehearsed for six hours that day. We rehearsed for six hours the next day. By the end of Friday, I had all the pieces 100% memorized. Since we spent so much time rehearsing, the music was pretty much engraved in our heads. This was likely true for eveyone else in the choir. This made me think back to the "audition" we had to endure when we arrived. It made me wonder why those in charge were so keen on sending people home if we were just going to memorize it all over the course of 12 hours anyway. I shouldn't have been told that I "just barely made it," when the adjudicators knew full well that we were going to drill the music over and over until it became second nature.
The night before the concert, we were at the hotel room. At one point, one of the guys asked me to get a bucket of ice. I went out and got one and brought it back. He put it on the balcony. The next morning, while I was taking a shower, someone came in the bathroom and dumped a bucket of ice on me. It was the same ice I had fetched the night before. At least it wasn't caught on video and posted on YouTube.
We performed our pieces in front of a packed Popejoy Hall. The audience was mostly comprised of All-State participants. Everything was fine until we got to "Shenendoah." It was this amazing arrangement that started with just the men singing. However, a few seconds in, one of the girls started coughing. And she kept coughing for a full minute during the first section. And she would not leave the stage. Everybody wanted to murder her! Even worse was that the concerts were recorded to be put on record albums and they could do nothing to eliminate that coughing. It was permanent.
The concerts ended Saturday afternoon. Immediately afterward, we all got back on the vans for the long ride home. We were all worn out from three days of solid music. It was too bad that I wouldn't get to experience that again for another two years.
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