Part 5: Carnegie Hall NYC our 1st rehearsal with the Director of the Tabernacle Choir

The chance to sing for Mack Wilberg, Director of the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, is one of the reasons I wanted to come on this trip - what an opportunity of a lifetime! Here is Dr. Wilberg with Linda Gartner, who directs us Sycamore Community Singers (SCS) in Cincinnati.

Sometimes when you look forward to something for so long, you can't help but be disappointed. I have to say that meeting and singing for Mack Wilberg was the opposite of that -- what a wonderful man!  Some of the sopranos in my section had speculated that he wouldn't even come in and lead the two 5-hr rehearsals on Sat and Sun but would have an assistant do that and then just fly in Monday for the dress rehearsal and concert at Carnegie Hall. But that is not what happened

DCINY was very well organized with these rehearsals: I got a badge at the breakfast meeting with my row and position number on it. Based on my height and voice part, it turns out that was my position on the risers onstage for the concert. And in the ballroom for rehearsals. We moved around a little bit making adjustments, so I ended up 2 positions different in the same row and just had to remember my new number and who I was sitting/standing next to.

I looked up front and thought the man standing there looked an awful lot like Mack Wilberg's photo printed on the music and sure enough: it was the great man himself! But so humble. So kind. And so positive. Think about this from his perspective -- he is presenting a concert featuring 6 of his arrangements at Carnegie Hall on Monday night.

He meets his 250 volunteer amateur singers on Saturday afternoon for the first time -- we are from Arizona, Minnesota, Cincinnati, and 75 are high school students from Iowa and Oregon. He has Sat and Sun to get us ready to dress rehearse with the orchestra on Mon at 12:30p

 The old joke is "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? ... Practice, practice, practice!" Frankly, I was pretty tired of practicing this music by the time we got to the ballroom on Saturday. (We started back in July).

But I can't believe how much Dr. Wilberg taught us in 5 hours! We sounded so much better when we left at 5p than when we started. And he was so complimentary and positive. He said it was good that we all knew the notes and had practiced so much because now we could focus on "making music." I knew what he meant -- when I start singing I'm reading the notes on the page but once I know them, I can actually "sing" from the heart.

AND, do what he said was most important, which was to "Listen louder than you sing!"

These hours in rehearsal just flew by but when we were finished at 5p, boy was I tired! And I knew we'd be back to practice again at 8:15a Sunday morning, so didn't want to do too much on Saturday night.