Ready, Set, MOZART!

LOTS OF CRITICAL INFORMATION IN THIS POST.

Everything is in chronological order. PLEASE READ EVERYTHING, even if you think it doesn’t pertain to you.

• Tickets should still be available from our box office until 3:00 pm today. Here is a link that actually works. Try clicking here to purchase your tickets. 

• Tonight (Friday) call time is at 6:15 pm in AED 118. (It’s still crazy cold in there!) PLEASE ARRIVE IN CONCERT ATTIRE! We will need every minute of this time to adjust the standing formation of the choirs, warm-up, and run some of the things that didn’t quite work on Tuesday. (CHORALE: It’s super critical you’re on time for this since so many of you had to miss Tuesday. WE HAVE to work out those double choruses.)
• We’ll start walking toward Puglisi Hall around 7:45 pm as it will easily take 10 minutes to get the choir situated on the risers.
• Mozart is first. Forrest is second. There will be a 20-minute intermission, which is barely enough time to walk off the stage, flex your knees and walk back on. NO WATER BOTTLES ON STAGE!
• The minute the stage is cleared, we’ll start loading the trucks with risers, chairs, stands, and percussion equipment! CHORALE CREW #1 – I’M COUNTING ON YOU BIG TIME! Please don’t dally to go talk to the audience first. As soon as the risers are clear we should turn around, fold them up and start moving. We’re loading out the back of the CFA at the loading dock. I’ll be there to direct operations. Trucks get locked up and left at UD overnight.
• CHORALE CHEW #2: I will be picking up sandwiches and getting the truck from the CFA tomorrow (Saturday) at noon to drive to St. Elizabeth. It would be great if someone could meet me on campus, help with sandwiches, and ride shotgun in the truck. If you can do that, please reach out to me directly. CREW – Alondra is still waiting for your sandwich order. No order – no food!
• CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA LOAD IN TEAMS: Arrive at St. Elizabeth’s BY 1:00 pm to load-in. If everyone is on time, it should take less than 30 minutes to have everything in place. Is there someone who can give me a ride back to campus after we’re done so I don’t have to call an Uber?
• SATURDAY NIGHT DETAILS ARE REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT…
• If you’re riding the bus from UD you should arrive on campus by 4:45 to load for a 5:00 pm departure. If you arrive at 5:05 pm, you’ll need to find your own way to the church!
• Plan to arrive at the church BY 5:30 IN CONCERT ATTIRE pm to make sure you have time to park, use the restrooms, etc. The choir will line up downstairs @ 5:40 pm to make sure we can be upstairs and ready to sing for a 6:00 pm downbeat. There’s not a second to spare!!! You should plan to warm-up in the car on the way there in case there’s not time for that before the sound-check.
• There’s a map of the St. Elizabeth neighborhood at the bottom of this post. I scoped the neighborhood earlier this week. The green rectangle denotes optimal parking that should be sufficient for most of the choir. The yellow rectangle also is possible, but the hill begins to slope pretty quickly so you may have quite a climb on that side of the church. PLEASE CARPOOL AND SAVE ALL VERTICAL PARKING (see map) IN IMMEDIATE PROXIMITY TO THE CHURCH FOR THE AUDIENCE!!! It looks like about 100 of you decided NOT to take the bus and to drive instead. 100 cars will fill up all the street parking very quickly. Not great!
• SOUND-CHECK runs from 6:00 – 7:00 pm in the sanctuary. That’s scarcely enough time to set tempi in each movement, let alone try out the double fugues. We need to start clearing the stage at 7:00 pm.
• IF YOU VOLUNTEERED FOR THE PIZZA HELP TEAM, perhaps a few of you can slip out of the sound check early to go downstairs and start setting up the pizza line. We need to get everyone through the line, fed, and pizza boxes hauled out to the dumpster by 7:40 so we can line up to go on stage for an 8:00 pm curtain. (Thank you PIZZA TEAM!)
• Again, Mozart – 20 minute intermission – Forrest. Restrooms are extremely limited. If you can pace so you don’t need to use one at intermission, that would be optimal.
• Again, the minute the stage clears after the curtain call we start striking the set. CHORALE CREW #3 loads the risers into the 26′ truck (pdh drives), orchestra crew loads chairs and stands into a 20′ truck (Dr. Steven’s drives) and percussion equipment goes into a separate truck (percussion crew – Dr. Anderson drives)>
• ALL CREW PEOPLE, DON’T FORGET to come back to campus and load everything BACK INTO THE CFA. Risers need to go back into Puglisi for the Sunday choir concert.

It seems likely I will update this document again tomorrow morning. Please remain vigilante and plan to arrive everywhere early to help alleviate stress for everyone involved. Quite selfishly, I’d rather be focused on being present on the podium than whether the pizza guy arrived or who used up all the parking spaces in front of the church.

Here we go!

pdh