Part 1: Carnegie Hall NYC every musician's dream

It all started on January 17, 2019 when Sycamore Community Singers like me received the following email from our director...

• You are not going to believe this!!!!! 
• I have recently been contacted by DCINY (Distinguished Concerts International New York) inviting us to NYC over President's Weekend 2020 to perform under Maestro MACK WILBURG at CARNEGIE HALL!!!!!!!!! You know this name.....Mormon Tabernacle Choir Director!!!!!
• DCINY researches for many composers/conductors (Eric Whittacre, Joseph Martin, Deke Sharon, Mark Hayes, Mack Wilburg!) to see which choirs are "out there" performing their music.  They found us!  They listened to us!  They reached out to us.  Oh, that Internet!  
• I had a conference call with them last Friday to discuss logistics.   Very positive.  We would need to arrive no later than noon on Friday, February 14 (!) of the weekend, meeting in the afternoon, free time that evening.  There will be two 5 hour rehearsals scheduled on Saturday and Sunday with free time for the rest of the days with a Monday night concert followed by a Gala Celebration!   We will depart Tuesday morning, February 18, 2020.

Didn't know this was on my "bucket list" until I read that email. From that moment, it topped the list and I was committed to going.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice goes the old joke. And boy, we did! Starting in July 2019 with a piece of music that was 40 pages long (Cindy). Our teacher's been around choral music for awhile: she made sure we sang for other directors this year, even ones who normally direct professionals like Mack Wilberg does. She had us sing with orchestra, which we don't normally.

Meanwhile my friend Margie, who had never been to New York, decided to join me and my fellow soprano friends Karyn and Lora. Instead of signing up for the "package" of meals and sightseeing, we decided each of us would choose 1 thing we really wanted to do while there. So in November, we booked our tickets to the Broadway show Come From Away, the NBC Studio Tour, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum but Tavern on the Green wouldn't take our dinner reservation until December.

In January we learned that we'd be staying at the Park Central Hotel and flying in and out of Newark on United with about 30 other choristers. Rehearsing Saturday from 12:30-5 and Sunday 8:15-12:30 in the hotel and in Carnegie Hall Monday from 12:30-2:10.

As my old friend Dan Wempe used to say when we worked for Linotype: don't wear anything but black in NYC if you want to blend in and look like everyone else. So that's what I packed with a few pops of color thrown in for good measure. And suddenly more than a year had passed and it was time to drive to the airport and fly to NYC.