Honors Concert 2010

The Honor’s Concert was this past Saturday and I’ve been meaning to sit down and write my thoughts for a few days now.  Everything ended up running quite smoothly, however it was an eye-opening experience of “what not to do” for the next person who takes over the usher chair position.  Which, I might point out once again, WILL NOT BE ME next year.  Tim and I have already agreed that the State Contest Chair is my cup of tea and I want to leave it at that.  Not that I can’t do this, but I just think someone else is out there with less on their plate that could handle this just fine.)

Anyway, onward.

The MMTA Honors Concert is a “gala event involving 700 young performers on 20 grand pianos.”  The winners from each age bracket are selected to participate in a duet on stage with up to 19 other students.  I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing.  Is it really that impressive?  Is it really that cool to be a part?  Well, I have to say… yes.  Watching an orchestra of pianos is so unique and, when done well, so interesting!  And the students dress to the nines.  There were young men in tuxes with tails and girls in fancy fancy prom dresses.  It makes the whole event seem so high class.  And just seeing 20 grand pianos on stage is impressive in and of itself!

The concert was held at Northrup auditorium on the U of M campus.  It’s a beautiful old building.  I parked in the Old Church Garage which is actually partially underground directly next to the auditorium so I got to walk up a tunnel to get into the building which I thought was neat.  After arriving I scoped out the building and figured out how all of my maps were supposed to make sense.  It’s a bit difficult placing ushers at doors that I’ve never seen… For example, there ended up being five floors.  But apparently no one is supposed to enter on floor 2.  And floor 5 is really too high.  So that leaves main, 2 & 3.  But after watching the flow of traffic I will recommend that floor 3 is eliminated and more people are positioned inside the auditorium to handle crowd control and “crabby people.”  Anyway, I digress…  After getting everything figured out my volunteers starting showing up and I started giving directions and placing people.  I’m a bit unhappy with the efficiency in which I placed everyone but everything ended up fine.

Once the concert started I was able to walk around and collect extra programs and get things figured out for the end.  At the close of the concert each of the performers are given a flower so I had to arrange getting the flowers to the exit doors and lining up ushers to hand out the flowers.  Again, everything went just swimmingly.

I was able to watch part of the performance from the wings of the stage.  And I even snuck into the 4th floor balcony (very high!) to watch 4-5 of the performances and then the college organ soloist winner for the state.  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!  And the way the sound just filled the entire room was fantastic.  It was awesome.  At one point her legs were all the way on one side and she was frantically playing the organ keys on the totally opposite side–quite the performance.

(Oh, and as a funny aside… I actually got sick from sitting up in the balcony.  Isn’t that funny?  I was nauseous so I had to leave and drink some water.  Who would have known?  Luckily it subsided after I walked around for a while.)

But I think the most impressive part of the concert was the behind the scenes workings of keeping a concert with 700 performers running seamlessly.  And I do mean seamlessly.  As the performers were bowing and exiting the stage the next group was already walking to take their place at the piano.  There were behind the stage “line leaders” that would bring the performers from their seats, re-line them up, bring them to their new seats on the wings of the stage, and then onto the stage when it was time.  It was so cool.  And maybe I think it’s cooler since I have a passion for organization… but it really was neat.  And I suppose quite necessary, otherwise the concert would have gone on forever!  It actually ran almost 2 hours on the nose.   Which I don’t think is bad, considering the size. Plus there were three soloists (2 organ, and 1 piano) and a solo can take up to 5-6 min in and of itself.

Overall, it was a grand event.  I was able to take some pictures, however nothing truly captures the magnitude of the event.  Hopefully the pictures within this post will give you an idea…