Filling Tallahassee with Song
The Official Blog of the Tallahassee Community Chorus
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Alfriend Hall, St. Johns Episcopal, corner of Monroe and Call Streets (entry from Calhoun street and parking there too!). Registration at 6:30 PM, rehearsal starts at 7:30 PM (it’s Carmina Burana!). Avoid the lines and fill out your registration form on our website at www.tcchorus.org, click on the Membership tab, then click on Registration Information, fill in the form, print it and bring it to registration with your registration fee, or save even more time by paying your registration fee online via Paypal at our website, printing your paypal receipt and bringing it with your registration form tomorrow night! J
Just want to check us out? Come on to Alfriend Hall, sit in (you will have to share music with someone) and register at our next rehearsal on Sept. 12!
See you there!!
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It’s Sunday, our last day in Prague. The day started with a bus ride through the countryside to the Terezin concentration camp, where we took a very sobering tour. There just really are no words to describe the horror that so marked what is now a beautiful park and hallowed ground. Truly a period in history never to be forgotten and from which we still have much to learn.
Upon our return to Prague, everyone split into their own little groups — some going back to the hotel for rest and packing, and others venturing into town to complete their touring and shopping. I think the Tallahassee Community Chorus has greatly improved the local economy of Prague’s Old Town! Of course, we kept running into each other all over town along the way and comparing shopping finds! My group was lead by our fearless soprano soloist Marcia Porter, a Prague veteran who knows where to get the best deals and how to navigate the local public transportation systems. So, Marcia led us (Joan Robinson, her daughter Kara Murphy, Sedra Butler and I) all over the old town area to the open air market and beyond.
Early on, we were also joined by John Sontag and Donna Vaccaro-Pollins, but we separated from them at lunch and then saw them again at the Charles Bridge. That’s kind of how it’s gone here - the groups ebbing and flowing and moving through the town’s popular areas, spending Czech Krowns and blowing credit limits like crazy!!
We had to find the National Theatre to meet up with the rest of the group for the farewell dinner which was at the Slavia Restaurant across the street, and we managed to beat the crowd there thanks to Kara’s map reading skills and Marcia’s experience! We were casually sipping virgin Mojitos (a very popular drink here) when the rest of the crowd entered the dining room. A great dinner followed, during which we took a few minutes to recognize our trip coordinator extraordinaire, Nancy Repplinger, for all of her hard work in getting us here to this wonderful city. We gave Nancy a set of nesting eggs, each with a different hand-painted Prague scene on it in memory of our trip. It was the very least we could do to thank her for all of her efforts!
As dinner was coming to a close, the Marcia group decided to split early, so we pooled all of our remaining Czech money and headed for the metro station, where we, with the help of some nice Czech citizens who helped us out with change, got some tickets and found our way back to the hotel. This involved some dashing up stairs and a very long escalator and running to the bus stop (keep in mind, this is after a whole day of walking all over the city!) We were joined by Kelli Duggar, who is now known as the girl prone to fainting (that’s another story!)! We all caught the right bus and made it back to the hotel before the rest of the group!!
Of course, no trip would be complete without at least one harrowing story, and we have one from Friday night. Jan Stralow, June Cox and Mary Anne Gray were trying to find the location of the Friday night concert and while walking across some tram tracks, Jan’s feet got tangled up in wire and she fell on the tracks, sustaining injury to her right eyebrow area and probably a few other spots as well. She’s lying on the tracks hurt and bleeding and asking her friends to just let her lie there for awhile; however, her friends are frantically trying to get her up because the tram was coming!!! In what seemed like seconds, the Prague police pulled up between the fallen chorister and the oncoming tram; the tram stopped, an ambulance was called and Jan was rescued!! Her intrepid friends were ready to throw their bodies in front of the train to save her; however, luckily, that was not necessary!! The ambulance crew cleaned her up, checked her out and she and her friends took the metro back to the hotel, where I encountered them in the lobby - Jan with a big piece of tape across her right eye!! Festival nurse Nancy Repplinger was called and soon arrived in their room to find June and Mary Anne having drinks, while Jan was under an ice bag!! The following day, which was concert day, Jan made it down to breakfast with a very attractive shiner, but determined to sing in the concert, which she did!! Disaster averted and a story to tell (or as my mother would say - “just another story in the naked city”)!!
Tomorrow (Monday) we take off on the return trip to Tallahassee. It has been a wonderful experience for all and a great adventure, with some beautiful music and new friends made. All thanks go to the Prague festival crew who have so graciously put up with us this whole trip and especially to Jirka who put it all together and who probably has not slept since we all got here!
-Jan Smith
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The concert was a sold out SMASH HIT! There were at least five curtain calls and both conductors were ecstatic!! The Czech National Orchestra was fantastic, the soloists were wonderful (especially Marcia Porter!!), everyone was engaged and of course the concert hall was simply GRAND!! What a night and what a wonderful way to finish this very intense week of preparation! The Doctors told us we had become the choir they hoped we would be!! The young soloist for the Bernstein sang perfectly and was just so cute!! Of course, Tucker was his usual excellent self, and Troy sang beautifully, as did the Russian soprano, Svetlana, and the mezzo who was one of Jirka’s Hartwick alumni. The evening was capped off with a great dinner in grand style, with recognitions given all around to those who had put the festival together, including our own Nancy Repplinger - the person who got all of us here, and who has been the nurse for the festival the whole time!!
There are of course more stories to tell about last night and they will be told in a later posting - it’s Sunday now, and we’ve got to catch the bus to the Terezin concentration camp. So, stay tuned!!
-Jan Smith
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Live coverage on Czech TV of members of the Tallahassee Community Chorus! What international celebrities! Coverage begins at the 125:00 minute mark.
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We started this morning with a rehearsal of the Bernstein with all of the soloists and our instrumentalists who will consist of an organist, percussion and harp - quite different from the full orchestra utilized in our Fall concert performance of this piece. The young Czech boy who will sing the treble solo was also with us and has such a sweet voice and is just so cute, all the women just want to take him home!! Dr. Armstrong was very good with him and it has been such a pleasure truly learning this beautiful piece from him. I swear, every time the young soloist sings, half of us in the room just want to cry!
At the end of rehearsal, we were visited by a Czech TV news team who interviewed Dr. Armstrong and also filmed us in rehearsal. Dr. Thomas also cleaned up some parts in the Mozart and then left to rehearse with the Prague Symphony orchestra. We were then released to lunch and another bus ride to the Rudolfinum, our now familiar drop-off point, where we were given several options to take walking tours with the festival staff or go shopping on our own. A number of us broke free of the big group and headed off on our own adventures. Tonight, the group is scheduled to attend a concert at the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. We’ll have to await word of that event from those who attended. My roomie, Sedra Butler, and I headed to Old Town, determined to finish our shopping and find the rooftop restaurant Donna Smithey told us about. We accomplished both tasks and had a wonderful dinner with great views of the town! I’m afraid we may have some luggage weight issues trying to get all of our loot back home, though!! We also wandered into a local cathedral, St. Giles, just off the Square and it was beautiful inside - a work of art unto itself.
We then took a rather perilous taxi ride back to the hotel (none of the seatbelts in the cab worked and the cab driver scoffed at the whole concept of seatbelts (and safe driving) generally! Another adventure to add to our memory books!! So, for us, it’s a relatively early night tonight - some real sleep in preparation for a big day tomorrow. We will be at the concert hall from about 1:00 pm until, so rest is definitely a must!! Back at the hotel, we ran into “the Doctors” in the lobby and they reported that the orchestra rehearsal went well-and once everyone has the same score as the conductor, everything should be fine!! :)
-Jan Smith
